"The Fallen Cloud" by Fiona Hsu
Find X by Stephanie Chang
I craned my neck over the precipice
to find x daughter-shaped
holes in the water.
To unhook a fish lip, unravel
it like a scroll. Some ancient truth
from social media influencer x.
No one asks where our daughters
have gone. You assume
they’re bare in the woods,
negotiating with witches to save
their mothers. What this country
does to its women.
What x country can do
while not one politician flinches,
instead kisses a bullet’s butt.
America has a selective membrane
for prayers. There’s x% chance
the journalists will martyr you.
America searches the streets
for who’s got their facts straight.
In X House, men martyr themselves.
All my classmates throw their money
at test tutors, few planning
to sit the test. Their net worth
x billion. I’ve got a vague memory
of papers on the kitchen counter,
of a government suit who sighs
as he riffles through a wallet--
the coins one could count
if my sister and I
were dissolved to copper.
A less poetic way of saying
my mother didn’t stumble upon
opportunity—not when leaving x
was almost a choice.
Here’s a reality America rewrites
every era: the physics of sainthood.
Who moves where, when,
why without consequence.
Who gets mistaken for x
or who is nothing more than x
and who should care less
about x. What but this country
invented the oxymoron?
America kneels before X.
I am trying to dissect
the flesh of Lady Liberty,
label each part by danger
to x people. All my classmates
laugh when told not
to say x, how they’ll end
up inside ivy walls.
How I am encouraged to
express, politically. Diminish,
politically. Exploit the political
when it “benefits”—it doesn’t
ever. All anatomy is dangerous.
to find x daughter-shaped
holes in the water.
To unhook a fish lip, unravel
it like a scroll. Some ancient truth
from social media influencer x.
No one asks where our daughters
have gone. You assume
they’re bare in the woods,
negotiating with witches to save
their mothers. What this country
does to its women.
What x country can do
while not one politician flinches,
instead kisses a bullet’s butt.
America has a selective membrane
for prayers. There’s x% chance
the journalists will martyr you.
America searches the streets
for who’s got their facts straight.
In X House, men martyr themselves.
All my classmates throw their money
at test tutors, few planning
to sit the test. Their net worth
x billion. I’ve got a vague memory
of papers on the kitchen counter,
of a government suit who sighs
as he riffles through a wallet--
the coins one could count
if my sister and I
were dissolved to copper.
A less poetic way of saying
my mother didn’t stumble upon
opportunity—not when leaving x
was almost a choice.
Here’s a reality America rewrites
every era: the physics of sainthood.
Who moves where, when,
why without consequence.
Who gets mistaken for x
or who is nothing more than x
and who should care less
about x. What but this country
invented the oxymoron?
America kneels before X.
I am trying to dissect
the flesh of Lady Liberty,
label each part by danger
to x people. All my classmates
laugh when told not
to say x, how they’ll end
up inside ivy walls.
How I am encouraged to
express, politically. Diminish,
politically. Exploit the political
when it “benefits”—it doesn’t
ever. All anatomy is dangerous.
Stephanie Chang is a high school senior from Vancouver, Canada. She is the daughter of immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, Adroit Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, and others. She is a National Gold Medalist in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, recipient of the Anthony Quinn Foundation Scholarship for Literary Arts, and Best New Poets nominee.
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.
Fiona’s works can be found on her website and her instagram page.
