FREE VERSE POEM

MAGGIE YANG

CARTOGRAPHY


My mother lectures me about poetry
            though she can't even spell it.

                                      When I chiseled metaphors into papers as a child
                                                                          she recited Li Bai

                                      一旦被连根拔起，风滚草就会永远旅
                            Once it has been uprooted, the tumbleweed travels forever.

She watches as I fill the daily crossword              when the only cross she knows
                                       is the one Jesus died on.

                                     I get another email from the New York Times
            one more artist has died
                                                 as the world begins burning in the snow.
             The moon claimed by all of us
                                                  buries its expression in the clouds.

            I act as a translator for my family when we travel.
                                     Anywhere beyond
                                                  my parents' country, they become homeless (adjective)

             because home is the language they speak. Because
                           what is the difference between dying and living
                                                               when both synchronize as family?

             Their eyes glaze over a monotonous wash of concrete
                                     skyscrapers, roads, alleys                   where there is no answer
 
                                      to the question I am trying to ask: if the tumbleweed
                                      travels forever, or does it just flatten?           
 
              I fold my hands and pray for the other face of the moon
                                                  to peel off my skin
                                                             and replace my eyes. 
Maggie Yang is a writer and artist from Vancouver, Canada. Her poetry has been recognized by the Poetry Society, The League of Canadian Poets, and Poetry in Voice, and appears or is forthcoming in Subnivean, Eunoia Review, F(r)iction Lit, among others. Her art appears in The Adroit Journal. An interdisciplinary artist, she is particularly intrigued by the intersections of the written word with the visual and performing arts.