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.
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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.
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The women, nursing child after child.
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Squat bodies built, to bear babies on their backs.
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Bent over paddies, necks turn into brittle bamboo shoots.
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Eyes squinting as shards of sun bounced off the water.
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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.
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The women weathered next to its blazing phoenix petals.
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The Delonix regia emitting longing and liberation.
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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.
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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.
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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.