Drawing of Xiao Zhen Xie (pictured above) and poem by Learkana Chong
there is too much rage to fit inside this poem.
there is too much devastation,
too much broken heart and bone,
too much swollen eyes and pooling blood
too much bruised and rotted flesh
too much desecrated motherland
too much, too much
to lay out in this colonized tongue
when diaspora is just a flayed carcass
that maps out all our traumas
when intergenerational trauma
is the pain of our ancestors bleeding into us
when grief is just another love language
when death is just another day
when their guns and raised fists
are given more reverence
than our weeping elders and mothers.
i am nothing more than a gaping wound these days
a half-strangled cry,
a ghost ripped from the decaying bodies of our people—
it hurts, it hurts too much, too much
this poem cannot hold my fury
this tongue cannot hold my hurt
this heart cannot hold
it hurts, too much.
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