Sarah Yang: Mother as Sea Monster in America

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Mother as Sea Monster in America

Every weekend, my mother swallows this country with

shōchu, the insides of her cheeks sheening with scales.

When I touch her, my fingers are dripping with storm.

She grows five fins and loses all her hair,

smashing syllables between teeth and leaking light.

Her new skin is always glowing. In this

wilderness language, I imagine that I am a

small beast who knows how to swim

or I pretend to be part bird because I am tired of my

mother mistaking hunger for home.

She feeds me her wedding ring, tells

me that whatever we can love, we should eat. I

look a little more like her chewing on her clothes.

On land in bedroom, my mother kisses me, stretching

my skin into a sheet that furls from a single fist of smoke.

Night ends with my name being cupped like a flame.

& I want to dream about you the way an ocean drains

its salt before wounding a coastline. but

Mother, I keep wondering how we have come this far

imagining that you could undress any body of water.

Mother, when you clawed at the bed frame

& I laid my head on your lap, know that I slept sadly.

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Sarah Yang is 17 years old and a senior in New Jersey. She is a first reader of Polyphony H.S., an international literary magazine and the poetry editor of Butcher Papers. She first began writing poetry in her freshman year, and since then, her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Sarah believes in poetry as a means to return home to your history and yourself.