I remember this clearly: 2 am bed sheets, rifted
with confessions. Waves of linen—mother’s rifted

ocean I pulled prayers & pain from. Like my father,
I babied & sucked sore thumbs on a bed. The rifted

characters mulled by tongue before leaving fourteen
years of solitude & teeth. I spoke to her rifts—

her mother’s buried love while she stared back from
the wrong side of the bed. Steady as all sons, she rifted,

so quietly, 不能接受 ¹ from her throat that is now
my throat. I am a mother’s child, but she does not rift

this morning for me. I am womb-scented because I am
most keen to blood. Smothering resists me. Her eyes rifted

me apart & I spilled, body turned outwards—begging
for love. Drifting, I wanted to tell her all about 裂痕s, ²

but her body is a sun drowning on the bed’s horizon. She
once dragged motherhood out from a girl to escape her rifted

past. Now thirty-nine, she rarely calls home. All her life,
she has met the wrong people, never clearing out the rifts

full of her dead. I was another fresh wrinkle she spoke into
that morning. This is where I don’t remember. The rifts

in my memory brim with 我疼你s, ³ but I awoke to the sound
of February rain. The mountain of her still sleeping, rifted.

The title loosely translates to “Mother’s Bickering // Missing Mother.”
¹ Bùnéng jiēshòu—can’t accept (in Mandarin).
² Lièhén—rifts (in Mandarin).
³ Wŏ téng nĭ—I love you (in Mandarin). The direct translation is “I hurt you.”

Black and white illustration shows a hand coming out of the foreground to grip fabric handing from above. There are windows in the background with a sun setting or rising. — Illustration by Matt Huynh

poetry-magazineFrom the magazine:母念 // 思母

From the magazine:母念 // 思母