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.