"Trespasser" by Fiona Hsu

Two poems by Precious Arinze

In My Dreams, My Father Keeps Losing His Voice

& i am left cradling what sound does to the body,
what silence - his tongue a small animal trapped
in a forest of teeth, unable to demand what has not yet
been given freely. it never occurs to him to be anything
but unhappy. he tries to stand, but his legs are the strings
of a kite & all the violent utterances of my youth are
stretched out before him like an endless tunnel of wind. it is
what will swallow him. in the dreams, truth drags my father
by the tongue & asks him to beg for mercy. he coughs & spits
& out comes my girlhood, my body new to me again, unmarked
by ghosts only a drunk can pass through. i present myself to him
with a new list of sins: sinous fields of dust blooming in every room
on a Sunday morning, a towel left unfolded & unused, the smell
of burning rice cleansing our nostrils. exhausted, we sit across
from each other, the better parts of ourselves mangled & bloodied
between us. i wake to taste what misery does to a bloodline, what
grief, what memories left to fester in our mouths.

My Grandfather's Name is Phil

something. but what comes after
i do not know. what is a name
if not an open sore
heaven will not heal and maybe
a branch to bind us to the moon
of this world? but he is already lost
in the soft caress of red dust.
i do not ask, so no one tells me anything.
if i press my head to the ground long enough—
in fear or quiet surrender—i can hear
his final pixelated breath rush out
to blur my vision. i keep thinking of grief
as a mother dressing me in too big clothes
i will never grow into. only be allowed
to swap from time to time. i worry when
i stand beside my grandfather in whatever
hell comes after this one, he will not know
to claim me. i let this ancestral exile thirst
a river into my wrists. and i’m sorry for all
the spilling lately. for my father. i’m sorry
children do not have to die for them to leave
you. the war has been over since he was last
here, but we keep practising the hunger
on ourselves. i have stolen so much to stay
alive. even my most haunting memory is not
my own—a smudged photograph of my
grandfather, pearling the shudder of time
underneath a cherry tree. his name becoming
full with the season. lips poised to break into
the barest song. begging his boys home.

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Precious Arinze writes poems and essays when she is not sitting in Lagos traffic and contemplating the decisions that have led her to make a home in the city. Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Electric Literature, The Republic Journal, The Rising Phoenix Review, Glass Poetry, and Berlin Quarterly.

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​Fiona Hsu was born in February of 2001 in Orange County, California. She has won first place in Yorba Linda Women’s Club art competition in 2019 with recognition from Congress, Senate, and Assembly, and she is a National Silver Medalist of Scholastic Art and Writing Awards 2019. Fiona is currently studying at UCLA as an undergraduate studio art major. Her works capture the aspects of beauty within woeful and melancholic definitions that narrate quaint and odd stories, in which she hopes her art serves as rusty mirrors for her audience—reflecting and reminding them of a quality and/or memory from the past.

Fiona’s works can be found on her website and her instagram page.