Poetry: American Sonnet for Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyeon Jeong Grant, Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Yong Ae Yue, and Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz by Sophia Liu
Some poems haunt us with images, demanding to be remembered. Sophia Liu’s poem, though only the length of a sonnet, lingers and lingers, and in doing so demands remembrance for the Atlanta shooting victims for which it is named. “I promise my mother when she closes her eyes / I will be good like a late sunrise,” says the speaker, and seems to know that is all that can be promised– “how quickly I can fall to my knees.”
American Sonnet for Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyeon Jeong Grant, Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Yong Ae Yue, and Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz
Every mother is pregnant with the thought / that she will protect her daughter
from the shadows of daylight / A waterfowl is shot in migration and plummets
into the mouth of a man & his red-ringed fingerprint / All I think about is the
black hair / the two sons / the dry heat against your inured hands / I move in
silence and wonder / how quickly I can fall to my knees / I dig sebum out of my
skin and sink into my dirtiness / I promise my mother when she closes her eyes /
I will be good like a late sunrise / What is it like to be applauded when there is
blood smeared all over your soles? / The man drops the dead mallard
under purple leaves / He says woman but means wingless bird / All I think about is the
white in your fingernails / the white in your scalp / the white in your name like
wrapping paper / You say I am here but he hears the heat / I am beginning to
think that if I scalpel out my throat & throw it out to the streets / the sky will blend
our faces into monochrome / My mother is beginning to question what she did wrong /
She tells me that patience trumps blood / but to never look / into the mouth of a man
Sophia Liu
Sophia Liu is a poet and artist from Long Island, New York. Her poems and artwork appear or are forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, DIALOGIST, Superstition Review, Storm Cellar, Underblong, and elsewhere. Sophia loves Ziwe, cows, pretty dresses, and babies.
