"The Winner" by RowanArtC
Canaan by Esther Sun
Tonight I long for a foreign homeland,
to wear Galilee on my hips
like a skirt — prima ballerina
of flood violence, of a virus
in control. I am no Moses, but I will learn
to carve open the sea. My friend’s account
of his Korean grandmother being shoved
yesterday in Whole Foods keeps
me in the car as my parents pick up milk
on a late night grocery run, the dark
armoring me like blackbirds over
a treeline. If my mother hesitates
before stepping out, she doesn’t
show it. At home, I fill the rooms
with rhododendrons, star-mouthed
Jericho trumpets, and hope the walls
will hear them. Tonight, I lie awake waiting
to enter a new holy land, to claim
some other home. By dawn I will fortify
myself with blackbirds and try
to swallow this country like saltwater,
make myself larger with all of this pain.
As America calcifies my throat, I will find
nowhere else to go. I will find myself
looking back.
to wear Galilee on my hips
like a skirt — prima ballerina
of flood violence, of a virus
in control. I am no Moses, but I will learn
to carve open the sea. My friend’s account
of his Korean grandmother being shoved
yesterday in Whole Foods keeps
me in the car as my parents pick up milk
on a late night grocery run, the dark
armoring me like blackbirds over
a treeline. If my mother hesitates
before stepping out, she doesn’t
show it. At home, I fill the rooms
with rhododendrons, star-mouthed
Jericho trumpets, and hope the walls
will hear them. Tonight, I lie awake waiting
to enter a new holy land, to claim
some other home. By dawn I will fortify
myself with blackbirds and try
to swallow this country like saltwater,
make myself larger with all of this pain.
As America calcifies my throat, I will find
nowhere else to go. I will find myself
looking back.
Esther Sun is a Chinese-American writer from the Silicon Valley and a rising freshman at Columbia University. A Pushcart Prize nominee via Carve Magazine, she has published poems in The Indianapolis Review, Cotton Xenomorph, CALYX Journal, Sine Theta Magazine, 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.
