June Chua
On our way to Tiwanaku, Poetry
The guide said We look like cousins.
I’ll show you what I mean when we get there.
In Tiwanaku’s radiant square
faces I have known gazed back at me.
Stone faces, so alive
uncles, grandfathers, cousins, forefathers.
Why are you
so boldly, unapologetically Chinese?
Back in Calgary, cut off from anything ancestral
we buried our wild, unseeded memories.
Teach me to become this revered face
atop a noble spine.
The sky cracks with a horn blast
to lure us back to the bus.
But I’m pulled by something more powerful
than my yearning to belong.
SOLAR PLEXUS: THE MIRROR MANIFESTS A 1000 YEARS, Prose
[INSTRUCTION: Sit in fading sunlight]
I do not know my grandmother.
What I understand is what the mirror proclaims.
My melon head. Bountiful breasts on a tank-like body. Chicken legs.
The body my aunts have. The daughters of the daughters of the daughters.
My mother’s contribution: bad gums, creaky neck, and nearly blind eyes.
How did they survive with this DNA?
[Re-position your body. Breathe deeply. Hands open on lap.]
I ask my body for a reply.
My ancestors stood in the fields of China’s Flower Garden kingdom.
Though, they did not enjoy that kind of harvest.
The women, nursing child after child.
Squat bodies built, to bear babies on their backs.
Bent over paddies, necks turn into brittle bamboo shoots.
Eyes squinting as shards of sun bounced off the water.
Ingesting cooked grains and salted fish, their gums wet rice.
I imagine they laughed bitterly at the notion of the name Flower Garden.
[Hand on heart]
Searching for origins in Guangzhou, I discover the Delonix regia.
A flame personified as a tree in summer.
The women weathered next to its blazing phoenix petals.
The Delonix regia emitting longing and liberation.
Prostrating before fate.
As such women ripen, they amass power, cultivated by pain.
[Stretch hands outwards to the sides and down front. Deep Breath. Hands on belly.]
They brand these women Dragon Ladies.
A woman achieves old age but is denied humanity.
I do not know my grandmother so, I conceive her story.
What is a dragon?
A mystical creature with powers of flight, magic, and fortitude.
They transmute flames, excreting an energy that frightens men.
What of the crumbling gums, decaying eyesight, and corroding neck?
Testimony to hundreds of years of survival.
[Hand on area above belly, the other at your throat.]
Her -- perched on a bench in radiant bloom.
The squinched eyes, the toothless smile, the power torso.
Somewhere in the bamboo bones of my body.
An ancient force rises.
It roots.
Radiating from my solar plexus.
I unmask my teeth.
The neck unravels.
The eyes kindle and luster.
Blood mutates into liquid lightening.
In my throat, a fire burns.
Bio: June Chua used to read out loud to her little sister when they lived in Borneo, Malaysia. Eventually, her family moved to the Canadian prairies, first living in a trailer! Her works have appeared in Tough Poets Review, Palisades Review,pocolit.com, Back Where I Came From, and The Best of Rabble in addition to Chatelaine magazine, NOW Weekly, the Toronto Star, and The Globe & Mail. Now a recovering journalist and filmmaker, June resides in Berlin with four balcony pigeons she calls The Little F*ckers. She can be found at @re.juneration.