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"space" by Thomas Gillaspy

2 poems by Kristin Chang

"Churching"
 
After church, my brother teaches me
dirty words & all of them
 
are ways to be womaned.
Night begins somewhere
 
at the blade-edge
of a body: my brother
 
sneaks into my mouth
& serrates my teeth, sucks each
 
clean enough to sun
a room & slap
 
a shadow off my body.
He likes the dark, the whites
 
of his eyes wounding
my sleep, waking an ache
 
in my jaw. In 7th grade,
my brother asks if I’ve ever seen
 
an erection. I will never know
how blood lunges
 
inside a boy, becomes a length
of time to forget
 
my body inside of. The summer nights
I fevered & teethed through both
 
our sheets, he ladled me
into a bath & the moonlight
 
stung my skin. The next morning
our mother burned all my clothes
 
& his too. Proven to prevent
infection. Years later, I cut my tongue
 
on a cracked tooth & cauterized
the wound with a match. Now
 
my breath is burnt, my voice a smoke
-furred silence, syntaxed
 
with scars. My brother still leaves me
voicemails that sound like prayer.
 
He kneels in my doorway, says
this is the last time. This is the last time
 
I’ll be someone else’s
god. Godhood is just
 
like girlhood:
a begging to be believed.
"Blowjob"
 
In Chinese, the word blow
is made from wind and bone
 
            graved in my mouth, he digs
            for the base of my language
 
unwraps my throat
around its breath
 
            & thumbs my eyes closed:
            if light is measured in the urge
 
to wake, this dark
I measure in mouthfuls.
 
            afterwards, I search my mouth
            for saltburn, a seasoned bone
 
a choke of vowels.
Once, a man
 
            taught me
            the trick to English
 
sounds: pretend
your mouth is full
 
            of forgetting. There is no
            difference between kneeling
 
for a man or a god. All pleasure
requires prayer, the body folding
 
            like a flag. Today, the neighborhood
            dog cradles a bone in its mouth
 
like an allegiance
to hunger. I pledge
           
            my house to fire
            & rob every grave
 
boneless. I spit smoke
at the sky’s bellyful
 
            of flight. A man enters my breath
            & I blow-
 
torch my name
into his skin.
 
            My first American purchase
            was a postcard:
 
greetings from the statue
of liberty. No one told me
 
            what the torch was for. How 
            it was never meant to light
 
a way into your own
body. How if you look
 
            closely enough, every statue 
            was once a woman
 
torch-lighting a nation
& firing her
 
            god, burning every
            body he was believed through.

Kristin Chang has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Teen Vogue, the Margins, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. Her gay + angsty little chapbook, "Past lives, future bodies," is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in 2018. 

Twitter: @KXinming 
Website: kristinchang.com

Thomas Gillaspy is a northern California photographer. His photography has been featured in numerous magazines including the literary journals: Compose, Portland Review and Brooklyn Review. Further information and additional examples of his work are available at: http://www.thomasgillaspy.com 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomasmichaelart/ 

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© 2023 Up the Staircase Quarterly
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