2020 Commended - Joyce Chen, 'Eating'

JOYCE CHEN

Commended - 2020 Tower Poetry Competition, 'Trees'

 

Eating

Chopsticks hold onto your hand quietly,

whittled from the blind roots that held

the earth, tasting its tunnelled depths,

arching their aged backs against the topsoil

pressed densely by shuffling sandalled feet

 

The worn wood is soaked with broth

and dishwash and cloudy rice-water,

Swollen with the hot resentment of rarely-shut doors

and the overflowing chatter of old friends

Separated by seas and embassies,

colliding in a clatter of tongues and

snapping bamboo.

 

They clench in time like knitting needles

To stitch together the outgrown seams

of frayed memories,

To remind a weeping mouth of family,

of fading foreign soils,

Dipping in and out as eroding waves

that relentlessly reclaim the sand.

 

Far from these opening arms,

Wide brushes of green stalks

pillow the heavy sky

Waiting to be sliced and sanded

and scattered across vast nations

and lie at last above a steaming bowl:

The shrunken pillars of a fresh home.