PROSE POETRY
ANGIE KANG
carnage
When my mother excavates pomegranates, she takes tweezers to the inner lining to preserve each jeweled seed. Systemic unwrapping of skin for bloody clusters of sheathed joy. When she finishes, my mom hands me the entire bowl. I am edacious and inelegant, sticky fuchsia tears dripping through cracks of both palms. A thank you between mouthfuls feels flippant; instead, I say nothing, which is wrong, and of this knowledge I do nothing, which is worse. My mom watches silently. Of course it doesn’t take very long for my fingers to scrape the bottom of delight. I leave the kitchen full of pomegranate and my mom with its flayed rubbery remains. I decide if I have a daughter, I might peel pomegranates for her too. Maybe I’ll give her chopsticks to make the seeds last and her savor my labor. More likely, when I see stubby half-formed fingers reaching towards me, I will willingly succumb to her wanting.
Angie Kang is an illustrator and writer living in San Francisco, CA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative, The Offing, The Rumpus, Porter House Review, Hobart, and others. Find more of her work at www.angiekang.net, or on instagram @anqiekanq.