Conversion Therapy
BY K-MING CHANG
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
When the bullet baptizes itself
in her body, my grandmother
mourns down the moon, dissolves it
on her tongue like a wafer. The night
a missionary fathered my father, nai nai
opened her legs like scissors
cutting along our dotted
bloodline. With her teeth she tore
the spines from bibles
bled open on the bed. In church
she worships a virgin. At home she hangs
her hymen on a bedside hook, blood
a mirror between her legs. The missionaries
fisted pews out of mud & preached
to pigs, taught us to brush our teeth with mint
leaves & chew 21 times before swallowing
fruit pits, priest’s seed. Nai nai feared both
would make her belly grow. The old gods
fell as rain. Nai nai collects
her blood in spoons, blesses my sweat
into holy water, says grace
is the god guitaring our ghosts.
Says marriage is between husband
& knife. Between mouth & drought. Between
the garden I’m gouged from & the Father
funded to feast on me. He skins me
before a fire, tautens a blonde
hide over my bones, teaches me
to burn is the body’s oldest belief.
*
Look me in the thigh. The arrow
I’ve lodged there, domestic as a wife.
I confess to castling the lady
in her tooth-bright tower. I can’t
resist how she sings to me. I circle
her tower nightly, hurl myself
bone by bone through her window.
We sweep the shatter with our tongues.
I unthread my cape & rebraid it
into rope. We escape down
our spines & into a forest
biblical with birds bleaching
to salt in the moonlight. We lick them
into flight. I chop off my breasts, my fat
ringed like a tree. I count the years in cages
I’ve broken into. The bars
I bent out of tune. Pleasure
our priesthood, prayer the key
my mouth unlocks to. My grandmother
dances ash down my throat, sews a steak
knife into my hand. Tells me to sever
each finger that enters me. I wear
a thimble of spit. I’ve spent a year
undressing you, I kiss off your buttons
& swill them with salt. My grandmother
says girlhood is an exercise
in control. I’m closer to a theory
of loss. My grandmother staples me
to a souvenir cross, what the missionaries
gave out with sacks of rice: hunger
mortgaging my mouth. Appetite
is insurance. When my wrists bleed
wine, drink holy of me. Free’s
not what I’m paid to be.
*
On TV, nai nai watches the gay pride
parade. Says she’s never seen so many
white people without clothes
on her island, the missionaries beat native
boys for going to school without shirts.
How they flayed the brag of their brown
til the bone showed, sudden as the sky
between clouds. Here the pews fleshed
from my thighs, the church organs
harvested from corpses.
Every Sunday, the croon of nai nai’s
callused nipples. It was her job
to nurse the missionary wives’ children.
While my father suckled on the udders
of guns & knuckles of sugarcane, nai nai
fed american mouths, her milk black
with flies. Above, the sky scythed through
the roof. The sea shredding itself
to tongue-sized pieces. Nai nai mutes
the channel & two men dye their beards
in each other’s mouths. Two women tie the knot
in each other’s nooses. Gay marriage legalized
before my grandmother. Instead of papers
nai nai owns a bible in every language she was
beaten not to speak. Instead
of a pension, nai nai donates her name
to god, repairs the roof
with a prayer for rain, adopts
church like the child
she was never
allowed to raise.
televangelism
BY K-MING CHANG
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
for Agong
In Chinese, ghost rhymes
with expensive & mother
misspends her mouth
on prayer with no payback, no god
bending our sky like a back.
What a daughter costs
a mother must pay
out of body: she reaches
into her blood
like a wallet, a wound
we eat out of. She says
one man’s daughter
is another god’s revenge: a river
lassoes our local church & my body
expires mid-prayer.
I wear my blood
as bracelets & go sleeveless
on Sundays. When rain reaches
my knees, I stitch the flood
my miniskirt. We will all be better
mothers than our mothers. Call this
belief. When I microwave my mouth
a prayer boils over. My tongue
tides. Mother heaps a houseful
of salt on our family altar, fills
a bath & stripteases, teaches me
to do the dead
man’s float. In a church
made of bone, I boil
a broth of fathers.
I season my wounds
& wear them aloud
I pile salt into an anthill & call it
home. When it floods, we flee
on the backs of our brothers.
We each a queen. We seek
sweet things, eat our gall
bladders seasoned in sugar.
Agong dies after dinner, bladder
come loose like a coin purse, piss
scattering like pennies
on the bed. I make a wish. I fork
open his eye & call it a flood.
Call a river a phoneline, my voice snipped
into silences. There is no country
we can afford to bury our dead.
Mourning, too, is an economy
of light. It was day when he died
& dark when I miscarried a moon
into the wrong country’s night.
We burned paper Chinese
money & it was the first
time I’ve seen my face
on something worth
something. No one tells me
why we capitalize God
but never ghost.
Never grieve.
symmetry
BY K-MING CHANG
2018 Gregory Djanikian Scholar in Poetry
Previously appeared in Muzzle Magazine
How our bodies domesticate
disaster: by swallowing
another country’s rains. By reining
my jaw to the sea, my bones
lurched into boats. My breasts bitten
into apples. My mother says
women who sleep with women
are redundant: the body symmetrical
to its crime. Between your knees
I mistake need for belief
in a father figure: once, we renamed
our fathers by burning them
out of our bodies, smoking the sky
into meat. I have my father’s name:
張, meaning archer.
I consider coming clean
through you like an arrow. I consider
the way we shape in bed, like the sea
has revised its shoreline & we must
move to meet it. This country calls
your body a hypothesis
it will kill to prove. Along the borders
of my bed, I plant a field of green
cards, flowers thirsting into throats.
I translate my wounds back
into weapons. I suck your name like a sweet
teat, pickle my tongue to outlive
its language. When I kiss you, I remember
every silence begins inside
a mouth. Everything edible
begins as a bird. At night, birds
peck peepholes into the dark
the way I have always watched
women: in the distance
between a girl & herself
is an entire body
bull’s-eyed, arrowed
holy. A girl castling
her voice into a throat
of stone. I kiss you & forget
to turn on the dark. I taste
salt afterwards, trace
where light through a window
veins your body, its wanting
to reroute your blood
someplace safe.
