Strange Footage of Transmutation in Contrapuntal

By Phoua Lee

To my mother 

your young hands
cradling monsoons
somewhere beyond the slope
before dayspring
orientation. made feral.
who are you shining for?
feline eyes flared
with ghostly remembrance
you hold onto your body
as though it were a secret
want to dance barefoot
so you can feel the ache
and know by the jolt
that you are not numb
strange blind hands
you awoke shimmering
shaved off your scales

forsaken as foolish 
wreaking wreckage  
and cloying chaos 
you are your own 
dishonest villain 
grin tipped to the skies 
your corneas breath-fogged 
like a violinist without their hands 
drowning your ankles 
until it open-mouths and you 
grow new teeth 
on the stringline of your hip 
everyone’s scared of you 
with you and your  
creating a fist dent in soundwave 
renamed yourself a dead country 
because it meant invisibility 

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Phoua Lee is a queer Hmong American writer born and raised in California. She is currently an English undergraduate at California State University, Fresno. She likes 3AM soda for when inspiration hits and believes that there’s a little bit of magic in everything.