Cha
BY STEPHANIE CHANG
Runner-Up for the 2020 Adroit Prize for Poetry
Selected by Jericho Brown
All our wounds rhyme with ‘tea’
in Cantonese: cha
as in a coffee stain on my mother’s
rented wedding dress;
as in my fingernail
stranded inside the palm of a boy
I bit my tongue watching
as he took his shirt off by the pool.
If I followed him in, I am sure
the water would curdle
this pig’s blood,
lick my bra into brine.
The pool, a vein of night
and expired ginseng,
our skin jaundiced by baking
in Taiwan’s hot mouth.
A dream where I love him
without holding his hand
in church. Without him
hand-feeding me, bird feeder’s lips
parted for God. I wish I could tell
each wound apart by the prophecies
of flesh scabbing over like Dim Sum
tea leaves. Cha, in disgust.
This, the past tense of cha,
what’s gone bad:
When my tongue virgined its way
out into a yellow fever
dream, hooked my hunger
in the boy’s eye and gave it
a twist. Who knew he’d look
more fish, paler in the flood
lights. A dead fish Jesus gutted
for the kicks.
If I love him, name me Judas.
If he thrifts flies to offer
as Gospel good news,
presents for the preacher,
I’d birth a new arch-angel
with his ghost, harvested
from half-prayers.
A knife’s intuition tells how
to make surgical incisions in the Bible
look like blobs of cha, oily
noodles, milk, honey, Kowloon soy.
A map gasping a trail to him, home,
the cross I cut out.
