how many words
my mother would not digest
for me.
when she instead swallowed
half the meat of a mango,
a chewed up slab of porridge,
she says
was for my name
to be tangible.
a girl born in the year of the dog
who goes on all four
limbs and picks at bones
beneath the bread basket
of pork buns.
how bruised the inside of my teeth is
with eat, eat, eat.
my name is pregnant
with half-digested peaches,
mango pits swallowed whole,
pruning chicken fingers in threes.
my name is a mutt
of two chopstick-fanged tigers.
how i want to gnaw
at the corner of their mouths
and pick their bones with my milk teeth,
splitting my throat open
for bowlfuls
of hwachae
splaying like bok choy
in the meatiness of my name.
how the mutt in me growls
for my stomach to churn
in diagonals for a mooncake
i will lose an appetite over.
how i want everything chewed
to a pulp
and scooped back up
like mashed tanghulu
from the pit in my stomach.
how i want to ring my tongue like a towel
around a rucksack of meatballs.
how i want the second skin of a peach
to wrap my lips in gold.
how i want blood sugar
to pump in my veins.
how i want
to refold myself
into a fortune cookie for the family. Lucien is a Hong Kong based writer who loves candy stores. His works have been published in the Eunoia Review, Hotpot Magazine among many others. You can find him on Instagram: @delucienal_
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