Up the Staircase Quarterly
  • Home
  • Nominations
  • About
  • Submit
  • Archives
  • Support
  • Home
  • Nominations
  • About
  • Submit
  • Archives
  • Support
Search
Picture
"Untitled" by Jing Lin

Two poems by Laurel Chen

passage
every grammarian i know struggles with loss
every grandmother i lose to sound was born
 
out of violence        there is no language i have
tongued that didn’t shove itself down my throat
 
no paper i’ve torn enough to make an ocean
in my wake i lie       awake in a nation naked    
 
with      grief tried to build     a passport from sheets
of water      felt statelessness a slippage
 
of wet      ghosts in my sleep       if language is a vessel     
then all my laments are still      at sea
 
water precipitates every leaving i hear       soft thunder
in the distance       must have been a country
           
a storm nothing but a thousand      ancestors
murmuring      their sureness through rain
 
i’ve been told relief feels
like spring but i am expecting showers
 
we cannot walk on water but we’ve learned
to wait through it
 
stronghold my patience for
an unpronounceable passing     inconsolable
 
uncrossable ocean     i weather every word 
if i close my eyes hard enough
 
i can almost see another shoreline
standing across the tide     we’ve waited for so long
 
i know this much       but give me a sign
saltwater     steady       a whisper
 
promise i am      listening

know your rights (redux)
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.                                                       
               I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or hand you
any documents based on my constitutional rights. I do not give you permission
to enter my home based on my rights under the US constitution unless you have
a warrant to enter, signed by a judge with my name on it that you slide under
the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on
my rights.

                     I choose to exercise my constitutional rights.



i do not wish to speak.   you, answer your questions.      
hand me any documents based on constitution.
my constitutional rights. your constitution.
my rights do not wish    to speak. i do not give you
 
the right               to enter. do not slide under the door.
do not enter        my home based on my rights
a warrant is not permission.        search under the US
                 the constitution                not a judge. not an answer
 
i choose to exercise my rights. give me permission  
to my home. hand me my documents
signed with my name on it            i choose          
to speak with  my right name       i exercise
 
my permission   my rights to my name
 
 
my name          a warrant to enter     
 
my name          my belonging
 
my name documents     my permission
 
 
 
my home the door           with my name on it


Laurel Chen is a prison abolitionist and a migrant writer from Taiwan, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 In her mysterious monochromatic photographs, Jing Lin reconstructs a familiar world that no one has been to. Her background in motion pictures informs her current work. As a graduate photography student at Academy of Art University, she worked with multiple darkroom techniques in traditional and alternative printing processes. She blurs the edge between photography and painting through the use of experimental processes. Solitary, Jing’s most recent body of work, portrays a nonexistent place to examine the theme of self-confinement. Constantly, she explores photography with these questions in mind: What did I see? What did I not see?  www.jinglinphotography.com/

Chinese, b. 1993, Chengdu, China, based in San Francisco, USA.
Picture
© 2022 Up the Staircase Quarterly
  • Home
  • Nominations
  • About
  • Submit
  • Archives
  • Support