"Greedy Innocence" by RowanArtC
(no subject) by Ashley Wang
this morning my inbox spits / out an email,
presents a parenthetical
(warning: this message
has no body) text. and suddenly a ghost / peels from my blue- / light Chrome browser, drips
across / black keys. and I wonder if the intern in some faraway office meant / to write a
poem. if they intended / a cry for help, tried instead to write that their body / had no message.
if the message was an omen: milk sitting / sour at an abandoned door. umbrellas / hanging
from airport ceilings / like scabs. / like the email, I too envision two endings to my origin
story. two possible selves. picture this: a woman sweating through white / lies. in her wallet, a
one-way ticket to Hong Kong but no proof / of home. (a shell shed of its tortoise. moving /
nowhere.) next, a girl’s face on a flyer / skinning concrete / pavement. MISSING PERSON
unspools across the page, summer heat rising / from the ink. (a man in a suit walks by,
swallows the paper to extinguish the flames)
question: which option is more alive? (answer: none of the above.)
in this town there is no luxury / of choosing. even then, the silent mouth is always trying / to
become. drinks dimes to turn / palatable, then turns around and gets its tongue cut / off. listen.
I am trying to use any word but / assimilation. bodies / like ours / dissipate once they’ve been
uttered / into existence. once / they are named. this is why I forget the subject / lines of all my
emails, let others fill / the blanks: darling
: hijacker
: ammunition
: baby girl
: mule
: why won’t you talk to me?
I empty myself into their titles.
presents a parenthetical
(warning: this message
has no body) text. and suddenly a ghost / peels from my blue- / light Chrome browser, drips
across / black keys. and I wonder if the intern in some faraway office meant / to write a
poem. if they intended / a cry for help, tried instead to write that their body / had no message.
if the message was an omen: milk sitting / sour at an abandoned door. umbrellas / hanging
from airport ceilings / like scabs. / like the email, I too envision two endings to my origin
story. two possible selves. picture this: a woman sweating through white / lies. in her wallet, a
one-way ticket to Hong Kong but no proof / of home. (a shell shed of its tortoise. moving /
nowhere.) next, a girl’s face on a flyer / skinning concrete / pavement. MISSING PERSON
unspools across the page, summer heat rising / from the ink. (a man in a suit walks by,
swallows the paper to extinguish the flames)
question: which option is more alive? (answer: none of the above.)
in this town there is no luxury / of choosing. even then, the silent mouth is always trying / to
become. drinks dimes to turn / palatable, then turns around and gets its tongue cut / off. listen.
I am trying to use any word but / assimilation. bodies / like ours / dissipate once they’ve been
uttered / into existence. once / they are named. this is why I forget the subject / lines of all my
emails, let others fill / the blanks: darling
: hijacker
: ammunition
: baby girl
: mule
: why won’t you talk to me?
I empty myself into their titles.
Ashley Wang lives in Lawrenceville, NJ. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Sine Theta Magazine, Polyphony Lit, and elsewhere.
RowanArtC feels that the work should speak for itself and invites the viewers to go wild with their imagination. The world within us (random thoughts and emotions) is a rich spring of inspiration for her work.
