Thoughts

thoughts

recently I've been reading snippets of things that were originally written in Mandarin, accompanied by their English translations. and honestly I've never been that interested in Mandarin lol school killed any interest I had in studying it... but now I'm starting to reconsider it? more and more often I find myself mulling over the intricacies of Mandarin, like how heartbreak doesn't quite convey the same feeling as 心碎 (xin sui - heart shattering) (I read this in one of Joshua Ip's posts). 爱 (ai) has no tense as compared to English - love, loved, loving, loves. 爱 is timeless (this one is from something I reblogged). 幸福 (xing fu) translates to "happiness" when it encompasses feelings of not just happiness, but also being lucky, safe, etc. idk I just find it very interesting, so maybe when I have time I'll actually think about it more and possibly write poetry with this train of thought

This nation calls my grandmother a crime, but there are not enough hands to wring the blood out of your name, America always reaching for a gun, America rechristening wombs into bomb shelters.

Kristin Chang, “Women of No Nation,” published in Teen Vogue (via bostonpoetryslam)

on having a boyfriend with OCD

He was always turning the lights on and off,

opening and closing the door,

counting as he went: thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.

Eventually I had to tell him that if he kept opening the door,

we’d have a whole bunch of house intruders

before the night was through. He responded by trying to kiss me once,

then ended up kissing me twenty-three times, then once more

for an even twenty-four. Then he had to redo two of them

because “our mouths hadn’t been quite aligned.”

Some nights I’d wake up with the moon soaking the bedsheets,

listening to the sound of him repeating the word “fuck”

over and over: he’d stubbed his toe on the bathroom doorway

but couldn’t stop swearing once he’d started.

I fell back asleep after staring at my pillow

until the floral pattern burned into my eyelids,

dreamt the two of us went to an opera but instead of beautiful,

tremulous voices rising high into the air,

two sopranos were singing “fuck” to the tune of La Traviata.

He apologizes the next day, says the new medication

made him feel like shit all the time so he took himself off it;

I respond that it probably made him feel that way

because it was working.

Two days later the ambulance comes and takes him away;

he’d accidentally cut one of his wrists with the steak knife

chopping carrots for stew

but couldn’t have just one cut wrist;

he had to have two.

Husband One looks to me for confirmation, no doubt skeptical of the party line. These days, only fools speak freely among strangers. I nod yes, but do not elaborate. What do I care about the dilution of our blood and the increasing complexity of our society when my most basic need for a wife and child is not met?

An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King. Harper Voyager. 2017. 

A dystopian novel depicting the consequences of China’s infamous One Child Policy and traditional preference for male heirs, An Excess Male is the poignant, deceptively matter-of-fact debut novel of Taiwan-born author and current San Francisco Bay Area resident Maggie Shen King. 

Over 40 million eligible bachelors find themselves without wives and abilities to pass down family names to children, one of the most crucial parts of patriarchal marriage customs, leading to the creation of Advanced Families with a hierarchy of multiple husbands for one woman. Wei-guo meets May-ling, aspiring to be her Husband Three after establishing a mutual rapport and comfort he had never felt with anyone else. The complex intersections between politics and love, state and family, and patriotism and belief climax as Wei-guo faces challenges, rebellion, and the quaking boldness of personal resolve. 

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Sino artists and writers worldwide: sinθ Issue #6 “CLEAR 清” is accepting submissions! 

Sine Theta is an international creative arts magazine made by and for the Sino diaspora. We publish quarterly print editions showcasing art and writing by Sino creators from around the globe.

We are now accepting submissions for issue #6, to be released on November 18, 2017. Its theme is CLEAR 清 and the submissions deadline is October 8. Please refer to our submission guidelines for more information on how to become a contributor. We feature a wide range of media, including painting, photography, comics, poetry, prose, film stills, installations, and more.

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eighteen

is the taste of asphalt and blood, school skirts tucked a little too high above the knees, and we keep running, keep our heads tilted towards skylight; film reel of blurry faces and dreamscapes that pass by too quickly, but i still remember what your hands feel like, soft, we are soft — but not broken yet; tell me, will playgrounds ever feel magical again? hour-long bus rides in the rain, golden-hour glow spilling across our faces, our tiredness; paper memories that will soon gather dust, you a roseate memory i shelter in between the creases; paths never crossing again, empty late-night trains heading home, ghosts feeding on nostalgia, someday we will return —

inspired by @dhritspoetry ♡