Lili Fishman
Acknowledgments I would like to thank some people for helping me along the way to this poetry chapbook, some in big ways and some who don’t even know they helped. Firstly, to Sean Forbes, my professor, thesis advisor, friend, thank you so much for taking me on, editing and editing and editing, finding nice things to say about my weakest pieces and finding criticism for my strongest, and challenging me to try different forms. Thank you. Thank you to my parents and grandparents for endless support (but mostly giving me things to write about), Zoe, for cheering me on always, the O’Connell-Johnsons for feeding and housing and hugging, my friends for making me laugh and making me relax, Grace, for everything including the kitchen sink. Thank you to Emily Larned for teaching me how to bind books, think about printing in different ways, and how to use InDesign. The erasure poem that begins with “I fucked with everything” comes from the poem “Vegetable” by Jillian Cundari. The piece with the starting line “raw and ripe” was previously published in the Long River Review’s Spring 2018 edition under the title “omakase.” The piece with the starting line “I keep dating painters slash magicians” was awarded the Collins Literary Prize for Poetry in February 2020, and thus will be printed in LRR’s Spring 2020 edition. Thank you to all of the “she’s” in this collection of past, present, and future. Thank you.
she speaks with her tongue tucked behind her ear
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the shadows seem to grow darkening the room and the brain wanting breaths to wane— adagio as she questions if she’s sane darkening the room and the brain thoughts pinch with vicious tendrils as she questions if she’s sane rolling squeezing snapping pencils thoughts pinch with vicious tendrils she has to close her eyes rolling squeezing snapping pencils the dark is all she can surmise she has to close her eyes use damp palms as a shield the dark is all she can surmise on her stomach she has keeled use damp palms as a shield the shadows seem to grow on her stomach she has keeled waning breaths— adagio
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there are so many things about new york that scare me. there’s the obvious “woman walking alone at night,” the hustle and bustle feeling that no one really actually cares, this fading into the foreground fear that nothing you do will ever matter, but truthfully, something else scares me the most. you know when you’re just walking down the street, minding your own business, imperceptibly head bopping to beyoncé and then you feel the subtle tremor in your foot as you transition from concrete to metal and suddenly you’re standing on a grate. and then it feels like these grates are the longest expanse of land you’ve ever seen, you’re an explorer in way over your head in territory unknown and unsafe. people have written about this terrain, once my friend knew a girl who stepped foot on a grate and it flipped up and bashed her in the head and she still suffers brain damage, I think. and you’re thinking all these thoughts and people are walking past you giving you strange looks as you’re frozen wondering how you’d pay the medical bills for brain damage, you still have student loans and the yield curve is inverted or something which almost definitely signals an economic catastrophe, at least that’s what your econ major girlfriend and econ major friend talk about all the time at dinner, while you sit there bopping to beyoncé in your head because you don’t understand all this econ stuff, you’re an english major, since it’s the only subject you enjoy, though you’re kind of a bad english major, like when was the last time you read a book? and— then you spot the skinniest sliver of concrete lining the left side of the grates so you hop over onto steady solid ground and just keep walking, more cautious than ever.
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i slept so much as a baby my parents thought i would melt into the sheets. i slept so much as a kid to prepare myself for the next day of play. i slept so much as a teenager and wished i would sink into my mattress princess and the pea style except I was the pea crushed under weights insignificant, green, but still there. these days i barely sleep. studies say the smarter people have more insomnia. maybe i don’t go to sleep because i don’t want to wake up to that horrible feeling of oh god, here we go again. i’m not sure what it is but as my laptop burns through the sheets and the light burns five am into my eyes i look out the window at the small sun rising and try to melt again.
I’ll get tattoos but I won’t get my ears pierced. it’s something about that needle going through the flesh, glinting on the other side.
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I fucked with with
everything
unspoken
bombs
this
You knew and slide how it feels lately.
you hold away from
a lot
left me cooked. In two I cry because they feel like her heart and hands.
ready but I can’t
Today.
I liked how the could and but she gave
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me grow extract the hands planned for 8 year me. and
back. that her
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it rained the day I died. upon seeing my still form on their way home from the store the clouds dropped all their groceries spilling cartons of milk and jugs of orange juice all over the trees and asphalt. the sun crumpled in on herself like a crushed soda can so the clouds hugged her and shielded her from the children’s view. no one likes seeing their mother cry. the sudden downpour upset many businessmen as they held newspapers over their heads for their pressed suits. dogs tracked in pieces of mud all over the carpet and basements flooded. pearls of water chased each other on car windows and lilies and tulips took a long, long drink. the day after I died the sun shone. but you could still see dew clinging to blades of grass.
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raw and ripe it sat pulsing on the counter. she reached out and poked. how should we cook it? place it in a pan and hear it sizzle. throw it on the grill and char the red right out. trap the juices in a hotpot, a quick transformation from tender to tough and drink the broth when done. no matter. we need to cut it up either way. vivisect the veins and ventricles and valves. slice thinly. then decide.
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I used to say her name reverently, devout and wholly hers. her name on my lips carries the same weight now, but it is more of an utterance than a prayer. it is a deep sadness that I say in passing, a rigor mortis on my tongue. a petal pressed between the pages of a book, its past life preserved, pickled, almost ghostly. everything has a shelf life; although, I’ve been told expiration dates are scams. maybe that’s why I always keep receipts, of each time her fingerprints colored my skin or my name trickled out between her teeth. they pile up, discarded ribbons in the corner of my brain, cluttering the pink matter and making noise unfurled. she has moved on and I can’t seem to stop folding and unfolding paper cranes out of the receipts.
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I say there’s no hard feelings but my brain seems to disagree. I secretly hope she’s just as miserable as I am. her name is bitter on my tongue and her appearances in my head let loose a flood of fluttering and flapping crows, a surge in my heart that pecks at what grace and dignity I have left as I spit out needles into the haphazard voodoo doll I stitched together when you left. my sanctuary has become my sisyphus and I don’t know if I want the boulder to roll down and crush you or me.
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my right thumb grows tired of being constantly picked at. skin peels off, the last shreds of my aspirations. red stinging flesh, rough from regrowing again and again every week. i pick and pick and pick and pick. once it got all the way down to the end of the digit. shit, is this a mechanism? i wear the same clothes two days in a row. i groan at the idea of showering. i never want to get out. i need to leave this place. my eyes burn. i don’t eat at all. i eat whole packages of cured meats. i sleep until two. i stay up until three. i’m sick. love you too mom. water is a foreign concept. i’ll do it later. i don’t. i lie. i scramble. i stare. i see white. i fall. i shake. my whole being aches. how are you? are you okay? i reassure. who? me. you. her. my thumb starts to bleed.
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i. it often starts with my mother’s voice calling me downstairs. come down, she calls my head a magnet, heavy and stuck to its brother the pillow. come down, she calls and I can hear the warning in her tone as I try to lift my head up but there is nothing. ii. now the gasping begins shallow breaths caught on lips barred from exit. I am shaking trembling eyes rolling straining darting open wide iii. come down, she calls and now there is fear I must get to her I think my neck will snap, fold over in half I am trying so hard to move it I would probably cry if I could iv. it’s a sort of calm as I finally realize what is causing my frozen limbs. I suppose as
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calm as one could be when they know they cannot move their limbs, only their eyes. all I wanted was a nap. v. a minute or more passes my vision clears and I sit up. my mother was never home. just me. instinctively clutching my chest, my ribs caving in on themselves, a fissure cracking above my heart. I always thought I never really valued living being alive is such a chore. but sleep paralysis always has me clutching my heart forcing it to beat
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I press firmly with cookie cutter nails my flesh the dough it leaves a perfect imprint crescent shaped five halves of a moon cake dark like lotus seed paste and she says please be careful with yourself and I realize I never learned how
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tell me how you would color me in, she says. we’re on my bed. only my desk lamp is on, casting a blue shade on the walls. i’m sitting up cross-legged, leaning back against the pillows. she’s lying down in front of me, face up, her thighs wrapped around my waist. i feel her warmth enveloping me. some slow sultry song is playing and she’s mouthing the words, eyes closed. i keep staring at her. i think i’m falling in love but she doesn’t know. tell me, she says. her voice is thick from her high. if my body was an outline on a piece of paper, how would you shade me in? go left to right? up then down? where would you start? show me, she says. i pull her closer to me so her center is up against my belly. my hand seems to be shaking but i can’t be sure. my brain is hazy from my high and from her. i begin with her right arm: slowly, tentatively, i use two fingers as a colored pencil, shade her in from left to right, wrist to shoulder. her skin is soft under my calloused fingertips. what about my hand? she asks. i think about when i color, filling in mandalas in adult coloring books when i’m too tired or stressed to do anything else. i go back for the details, i say. i start on her shoulder, top left diagonally down. when i reach the swell of her breast, i pause. i glance at her, eyes still closed, breathing languidly and evenly. she can tell i barely brush over her chest, skimming over to her stomach. 17
you missed a spot, she says. you’re going to have blank spaces there. start over, she says. my eyes widen and i blush in the dark. maybe i’m not just imagining the way she stares at my lips sometimes, laughs a little too loud at my jokes. i start over. this time, i pay attention to the small hills on her chest, the valley between her breasts, still using the lightest touch. when my expedition is over, i breathe a sigh of relief. my colored pencil has made it to the other side of the canyon. i trace down her other arm, then circle back to her neck. my fingers slide across her collarbone, the dip in the dimples above it. i color in the arch of her neck, the smooth expanse of her forehead, the pliant hill that is her nose. i shade in her cheeks, pink and soft. when i paint her lips, i can feel her smile. i stencil designs around her neck, squiggles and stripes, then journey down and circle her belly button. i flatten my palm against her stomach. now my whole hand is my brush as i stroke down her right leg, then her left, using wide motions, painting every inch of skin. then i go back for the details. my index finger is my number one pencil, shading in each digit with care. it’s the small things that require the most attention. i finish with the first hand and repeat with the second, intertwining my fingers in hers when i am done. i close my eyes as well, feel her warmth against my belly, hot and deep. i slide my hands up her stomach and the sides of her chest. i pause there. she is breathing lazily, the edges of her mouth turned up, eyes still shut, and my god, what a beautiful canvas. i extract my hands from her skin. that’s how i would color you in, i say.
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later she does the same to me, but traces all of me first. starts at the bottom of my left leg and her nail drags across the edges of my body, my side and my breast and my armpit, my fingers and my shoulder and my neck, my ear and my forehead and my other breast, my waist and my thigh and my heel, my center and back to my side. then you trace it again, to make it extra dark, she says. and she does it again. eventually, she colors all of me in, and the feeling of her hands on my skin is the best texture i have ever felt.
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my parents my aunt and uncle on my mom’s side my aunt and uncle on my dad’s side that cousin and his wife that other cousin and his wife my best friend’s sister and her wife -------
in ap psych we learned about something called a flashbulb memory. “a memory resulting from surprising news or an event that is exceptionally vivid and detailed.” the example my teacher gave was of 9/11. i racked my brain and immediately, two cookies. special from an italian market. wafers in spirals, one half dipped in the richest chocolate. dinner was over and i asked for two cookies. my mother said okay, and i vaguely remember being surprised. my sister and i only ever got one cookie for dessert. we scrambled for the blue box, tipping the container into our waiting palms as they rolled out one by one. i sat back down at the table and that’s when i go deaf. -------
i held those cookies in my hands chocolate melted on fingers a brown sticky warmth shards of cookies pooled in palms as i stared at my placemat deep red yellow swirl leaves sewn into them i sense my parents talking but can only remember the cookies crushed rough melted sweet -------
to nine-year-old me, my parents telling me they were getting a ______ was the equivalent of 9/11. dramatic, yes, but when i saw those cookies at a store the other day i could feel pieces scratching my palms, thick hot fragments. 20
i keep dating painters slash magicians. once, a tinder date painted a necklace of violets around my throat, a chain of unique design. i touched a petal and watched it fade and then return. i suppose the ink hadn’t dried yet. my upper lip a navy blue, blooming somberly. i wondered what method or brush he had used. i had never seen it before. but it was one of those semi-permanent tricks, a ruse you rework again and again in your mind after the magician has left town. lying down, palms up in front of him. i should have known he would spill paint, splatter the drops pollock-style, wet pearls that smeared all over my skin and legs and sheets and my front was a violent patchwork of crimson, dripping down my stomach, and i did not know if i loved it or hated it. another painter slash magician i dated for a long while. she was different. she had been a magician’s assistant, once. he sawed her in half at every show, and soon there was not much of her left. he sewed her back up with rusted wire, murmurs of thanks, and she could only nod. somehow, she left his show in one piece. we covered each other’s bodies in landscapes of stars and deep woods when we were happy and we flung full cans of paint at each other’s heads when we fought. our last fight she chucked playing cards at my chest with such precision and velocity it drew blood, the red seeping like a pen pushed too hard on a page. my houdini i remember the most had never performed before for someone like me. she was used to crowds of men watching her, eyes anywhere but her face, so when i looked into her eyes i could tell she was nervous. she was a bit sloppy, fumbling with the scarves up her sleeves and the dove in her pocket, but i was entranced all the same. when the dove finally appeared in her hands, cooing and alive, i applauded her, and she kissed me in thanks. she left 21
in the morning quietly, and i haven’t seen her since. i guess she was here for one night only. a once in a lifetime ticket for her and for me. i may not be a painter or magician but i can still appreciate their work, even if it is fleeting, merely a trick of the light, a sleight of hand, a puff of smoke.
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i asked her if she has any special talents. “yes. ice ice baby.” so i heard all of the verses of vanilla ice, half mumbled but right. she had one hand on the wheel, the other one waving to a beat not part of the song but of her own creation. drunk, slurring, i knew i shouldn’t be here in this car with mcdonald’s and seven whole shots but i liked her. and we do stupid things for girls and ice ice baby.
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一 Chinese people love white people. I’m not quite sure why. The native Chinese love to take pictures with the tourists, throwing up peace signs and sticking their tongues out. A picture from my high school’s annual China trip went viral a few years ago. Dozens of Chinese elementary school students reaching, grasping, touching an American boy’s red hair with wonder. It got thousands of upvotes on Reddit and I secretly wished I could be white, too. (No one wanted to take pictures with me) 二 One night at bedtime, my mom read a story to me about a cheetah who was raised by a family of lions. She explained to me that even though the cheetah didn’t look like the lions, his pride family loved him all the same. (They did) 三 We were loitering outside of McDonald’s after school when the two guys came up to us, chattering on about some crazy woman who was stealing Asian babies and putting them into sex slavery. They held out flyers to us. “No, thank you,” my friend said between his teeth. “What about you?” The boy stared at me. “They’re your people. Here, you can put it up in your hut.” (I did not) 四 Training took place on a Saturday afternoon for my regular summer job as a camp counselor. My boss clapped his hands. “Let’s go around and introduce ourselves, even though almost all of us know each other. How about we say our name, favorite animal here at the barn, and, uh… what hospital you were born at.” Fuck. 24
I scrambled to think of something to say. It was hot that day, and my brain couldn’t work under those conditions. My coworkers began talking. I absently heard Hartford Hospital several times, but my mind was still blank, baking in the sun like an apple pie. I cleared my throat. “Hi, you guys know me. My favorite animals are the donkeys. And, um, I don’t know if I was born in a hospital. Let’s say the whole country of China was my hospital.” The tension was ripe. My boss looked thoroughly embarrassed. (Fuck you) 五 “You know, I never thought I would date an Asian girl,” he remarked to me as we sat on his couch, one arm slung lazily around my shoulders like an afterthought. “Well, I never thought I would date a skinny white boy, so there’s that,” I said. (Fuck you too) 六 An old lady with a walker inched towards me, sticking out from the crowd of senior citizens exiting the auditorium. I was hoping we could get this over with quickly. My dress shoes pinched my toes, a modern version of foot-binding, and I could still feel the heat of the bright lights onstage slicking my neck with sweat. “What a fabulous concert!” she trilled. I thanked her for coming. Yes, jazz is an underappreciated art form. Yes, we have been practicing for months. “Now, where are you from? China?” I wished her walker would snake around her neck and stop her from speaking. “I have a friend who married a woman from Hong Kong.” She pronounced those last two words as if talking to a child, elongated and excited. “They’ve been married for twenty-five years!” Next to me, my fellow bandmate clutched my arm, squeezing her shock into my skin, her eyebrows flying into her hairline. I accepted it. 25
tive.
“That’s nice,” I said. “They adopted a baby from Korea. It’s an international family!” I cut her some slack. She was old. Not much time left to be insensi(What the fuck is an international family)
七 I wrote my college essay on being Asian in a white family and a white town and a white world. My GPA was as high as the weed number. I marked a 34 on my ACTs. I got into one school. (My safety) 八 My dad and I went out for dinner the day after my nineteenth birthday. He came up to school and we went to some random restaurant that had good Yelp reviews. As we sat down and my dad ordered a beer, a ginger ale for me, I saw the neighboring table look at us with disdain and disgust. Jesus. He’s my dad, not my sugar daddy. (There are plenty of other creeps with yellow fever out there) 九 When I was younger, I used to pray at night. I would settle at the foot of the bed in the dark, hold my hands together as if squishing some Play-Doh, and scrunch my eyes shut. Sometimes I would pray for nachos at school the next day. Sometimes it was for my sister to stop teasing me. She often teased me while I prayed. Sometimes I asked to know my birthparents. Sometimes I prayed for more Lego sets. (I mostly wished for nachos) 十 “Do you know what this means on my shirt? Can you read the characters?” “No.” (Really Grandma) 26
21 moments before your 21st birthday -
coating your hair in vaseline because it feels nice there discovering schools aren’t open on the weekend crying because of it putting on your bathing suit the night before you needed it getting hushed by the teacher getting bullied by eight-year-old girls not wanting to be a snitch tugging down a stupid training bra because you felt like it should be a shirt autoimmune disease number one baby’s first colonoscopy having a “what is this feeling?” moment from wicked in which you were elphaba and she was glinda making crepes for dinner averting your eyes at victoria’s secret your first red hated glimpse into adulthood considering testing for the braca gene fostering a deep hatred for motorcycles tweeting at gillian anderson mistaking a hamster for a mouse kissing me with empanada crusts stuck between your teeth interviews with pyramid schemers and white old men hot cheeto fingers cheek to cheek with kittens you’re allergic to
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the bees just buzz and fuck and sting and pollinate for honey they don’t know what a treasure they’ve got, neither do you, honey golden yellow, orange tinted, sweet nectar sitting in the comb they once found it in a pyramid— never expires, honey smear it on some challah, babe, and dip those apples, rosh hashanah, you catch the drops on your fingertips, i’ll watch you taste it honey if it starts to hurt your teeth you haven’t eaten enough of it you haven’t lounged and lazed and lolled before in all of this honey with hips like that, girl, closer, let me see if your eyes are golden with lips like that, girl, kehlani knows, i bet you taste of honey
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my grandma always tells me this story of when I was six, on the plane to china, and she told me to go to sleep and so “I just put my head down and went to sleep.” these days it’s a little bit harder, since I never seem to have enough room. on my left there’s a burning furnace the shape of a person, snoring until I prod her face and she turns over, saying sorry in her sleep, I have a dog between my legs, so hot you could fry an egg, but surely only someone evil would disturb a dog having sweet dreams, and there’s already another dog on my right side, he’s slightly more polite with space but not that much, and I just know I’m going to have to get up at two am and let these boys out to pee, and this blanket just traps all the heat inside, I’m a human burrito, sweating and wrapped up and it is sweltering, so I brush the furnace’s hair out of her face and give the two dogs some pets on their bellies and flip their ears inside out and resign myself to my terrible fate.
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Colophon This book was created using InDesign, using stab binding to bind it. The drawing in the front page is artwork by Nic Lombardo, inspired by the first poem in the collection. The primary typeface is Minion Pro, Minion Variable Concept Display Italic for the italicized sections, and Kozuka Mincho Pr6N for the Mandarin characters. The poems themselves went through many edits and revisions, helmed by Professor Sean Forbes, and the book design was critiqued by my classmates and Professor Emily Larned. This book is a labor of love, with a few challenges due to COVID-19 cancelling classes, and therefore the whole self-isolating thing, but I’m just glad to have produced this book in any form at all. Thank you for reading.