SELF PORTRAIT, WITH OR WITHOUT PANDEMIC

This poem was written by Jennifer Lai in a 12-Month Poetry Collection Generator taught by Angel Nafis

With the news in the morning, sirens at night.
Without extra floss. With waiting carrots and celery and onions.
Without the barriers of time, or the earth’s extra moon.

With how many layers of cotton,  and  your family?
Without crowded aisles of banchan at HMart.
With a pathway of peaches and other simple constellations.

Without the edge of evening. With the constant inevitable lag of dawn. Without the brand name, please, just the generic this time.
With the rest of the animal kingdom.

Without the names of my neighbors, or the birds on the sill.
With the sister who knots together birth and death.
With a bowl of chicken soup and so many to share with.

With kind gods, bargaining for gravity.
With cruel gods, the one and the same.

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Jennifer Lai’s collection, DUST WE CARRY, is a book about what’s left over—after loss, a difficult relationship with a parent, after the head and tail of the fish have been eaten. What still quakes in the wake of familial and ancestral trauma? What can be preserved, and better yet, reclaimed from childhood? How do we find joy and meaning in survival? This collection aims to unearth the silence around grief, memory, violence, and the Chinese/American diaspora. DUST WE CARRY is about the debris of loss, “too small/to catch.”