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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4362 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Woman to Woman M The woman next door rushes at me full force, scarlet paper dragon in a Chinatown parade. Her native tongue snaps back, forth – cymbals, drums discordant to one too naïve to follow her fireworks. She swears I pilfered kin from her yard, stole idolized ore, boulders that bore the names of her dead. She calls the cops; I call her crazy. We split along the bias. In June, she moves to Tucson to midwife for her daughter. In the Year of the Monkey a decade later, I sketch pictographs of foremothers on sacred stones outside my home: Honor, Compassion, Imagination, Knowledge, Loyalty, Art, Whimsy, Laughter, Love. I birth bottle rockets, scrawl Serendipity in flagrant red across my bare breasts to scare the beast. I invite my new Sicilian neighbor to Guo Nian. She says I’m crazy and she doesn’t eat Moroccan. |
