"Sibylline Song" by Nam Das
Elegy Fantasie by Emma Miao
for all the mothers-to-be before Roe v. Wade
It’s November 1972 and the winter air hurts
To tongue, sky gasping for a new era.
Earth groans in preservation, aching
For movement. I’m finally alive,
Burning in this snow— as childhood murmurs rush
Through ghost-conscience, feebling by the moment.
It’s been three years since Mother’s gulped this
California into rivering lungs, four since the
Great Atlantic surged crests into womb. I remember.
Fragility is beautiful, they told her
As she sank cold hands of my flesh into soil.
She’s paler now— shattering glasses
Before the guests arrive, movements
Languid and slipping in the shutter-frame.
Loss is too unsparing, so she
Imagines things instead.
And they’re whispering again in the hallways,
Did you hear what she did?
She’s screaming silently,
The empty space bruising
Her throbbing belly.
She thirsts for rain.
It’s November 1972 and the winter air hurts
To tongue, sky gasping for a new era.
Earth groans in preservation, aching
For movement. I’m finally alive,
Burning in this snow— as childhood murmurs rush
Through ghost-conscience, feebling by the moment.
It’s been three years since Mother’s gulped this
California into rivering lungs, four since the
Great Atlantic surged crests into womb. I remember.
Fragility is beautiful, they told her
As she sank cold hands of my flesh into soil.
She’s paler now— shattering glasses
Before the guests arrive, movements
Languid and slipping in the shutter-frame.
Loss is too unsparing, so she
Imagines things instead.
And they’re whispering again in the hallways,
Did you hear what she did?
She’s screaming silently,
The empty space bruising
Her throbbing belly.
She thirsts for rain.
Emma Miao is a high school sophomore from Vancouver. She was recently named a commended Foyle Young Poet of the Year 2019. Her work is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review and The Adroit Journal, among others. Find her on instagram at @emxpoetry.
Nam Das (Filipino, b. 1989) creates open-ended visual stories by arranging figurative elements into an assemblage forming a central idea, an idea that plays around Jungian archetypes of the collective unconscious or mythologems observed throughout history. He uses a limited palette of four colors in his oil paintings. Also called the Zorn palette, it's composed of: Titanium White, Cadmium Red, Yellow Ochre and Ivory Black. Nam began working as a full-time painter in 2019.
