motherland
by Evangelina Ariana Thornton
your eyelids slope like yunnan’s
mountainous horizon; your skin is the pale-
yellow of your grandparents’ love letters;
the bridge of your nose, the peak of a
muddy shallow gorge; your hair is woven
from the wooden silk loom. Child, curve
your pink lips like the weathered moon gate
in darkened gardens, to form the vowels that
don’t exist in your second language. This is
how we say go and collect, the steamed fish
of spring festival feasts and the lush-green
rice paddies you have never seen. Your
tongue flounders like a foreigner’s; your
muscles strain in international waters.
Sleepless, you bend over your bathroom
sink, excavating your reflection. Your irises
are the black ink of pine resin soot, bones
exposed like unraveled handscrolls. You toil
with your mouth until your cheeks sting and
thighs twinge, staying there until the moon
rises in that distant country, struggling to
speak to the origins of your body and to
enunciate your motherland.