by Spencer Chang
after 228 Incident, Taiwan
my dear Li are you safe it’s been years do you still keep
our portrait by the bed on good nights moonlight spills through
the barred window barely enough to lap up from the floor to see
myself bared-teeth & snarling on this steel bench a slit the width
of a shut eye cut into the door a tray passed through hollowed
then pushed back months ago a roach passed beneath this door completely
unaware grain by grain my trail of rice I led him close & tried
to pocket him only to feel wings crackle in my fist breathless
three days I didn’t eat but scattered moldy bread crumbs praying come
back come back come back some nights I imagine myself lifted like a gun
shot powder igniting over me & it’s all silent again cigar smoke
drifts through I hear fire swallowing the old streets a truck slamming
into the crowd without a quiver a man kneeling on asphalt crawling like a tiny insect
like a prayer it repeats & repeats but sometimes if I’m quiet enough
the world goes still & it’s all fall again the tung tree outside undressing
as a petal the white of your dress pirouettes in undress & redress I’m still
the same & graceless counting seconds to the slow trickle of sweat I spit
chewed apple pits all tender & fallow into the floor I claw the concrete just to feel
something alive in these hands when I shudder awake your face shadows
the moon I can’t recognize you anymore— O Li I can only imagine chasing
a rabbit through darkened meadows clinging until it squirms & slips
back into the earth I spend nights pressing my ears to these walls searching
for a pulse skin close I could almost pass through to find you asleep
in a burning temple
Ghost Stories (II)
for Vincent Chin
& they bury their hammers into the cold machine
like gavels. another hit caves its teeth, lifts
its jaw & black oil brims out. for criminals
like these, they say justice. hunched close beneath the streetlight’s
drone, they raise their hammers, chant this is our country
& the TV switches—a reporter suited in blue says good
morning America & I profess to be good
citizen, twist my jaw like a machine
around the Os & call this country
home. leaving for groceries, I saw them lifting
flags up their front gates. I avoid streetlights,
pray my shadow won’t be mistaken for a criminal’s.
but I, refusing to speak my prayers in English, I, criminal,
I, on the streets licking shrines with my dirty tongue, I, good
beggar bad immigrant, I, smothered by the streetlights—
I fold my arms, announce myself a drowning machine,
mouth crushed & reassembled a silver ring. I only lift
my hands up, palms outwards, when a man asks what country
I’m really from, I say our country & he says my country—
it’s Friday night & I mistake my reflection for criminal
again, my tattered jacket fuming with sulfur. still, I lift
my right hand & practice my oaths. good
subject, loyal soldier, obedient worker, open machine,
let you tinker with my ribs under streetlights
& you, gilded like a lost savior, make streetlights
of my eyes. I reach for all the windows, but find a country
of mirrors. a gunshot in low frequencies, their machine
hands pointing everywhere, someone needs to be the criminal—
a boy mistakes my prayer for begging & says no good
in saving a broken thing. two men lift
their baseball bats & splinter the moon. their cuffs lifted
for cracking a skull, smoke turned halos under streetlights.
they dress blood in snow, kiss the dirt, call themselves the good
citizen I can never be, my body turned an open country.
O, dim my mouth, make me faceless, strip the criminal
from me—. at the ceremony, I machine
my hands. I play good. we all pledge. they lift
flags. mouthless machine. dead machine. the streetlights more
alive than ever in this country—where anything that moves is a criminal.
Spencer Chang is a high school senior from Taipei, Taiwan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in diode poetry journal, RABBIT, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2021 YoungArts Finalist in Poetry, and his work has been recognized by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.