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"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.

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.
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