孤掌难鸣
gū zhǎng nán míng
(proverb. a lone hand finds it difficult to make a sound)
*
1952, my great-grandfather writes
salt-stained letters from across the sea
to my great-grandmother, left thumb-print
dragging ink hastily ground
on a gold/black inkstone bargained
away for safe passage, brushstrokes
dancing like the first breath
after breaking above water:
the revolution paints my fingertips red
but leaves my palms empty,
its hungry grasp reaches
into the gaping maw of my self
and trawls through my entrails
for the last leaves of autumn.
he escapes with two children to join
the woman who holds half his sky
for the next fifty-two years,
their palms pressed together.
he tells me years later of his dreams
of the revolution, of the swell
of the people’s hearts, the push
forward like the arc of a whip—
it crashes down just as hard
all bleeding fingernails
and bruised wrists.
2018, I watch myself hauled from
the ocean currents, pages of my
past self lost to the water’s
hungry clutch. let slip two reeds
onto the train tracks by the seaside
of my hometown, offer prayer
in the form of peeled mandarins
and hand-rolled dumplings to
the first generation to flee
beyond the sea. then celebration:
the trajectory of a firework
marking another year survived,
the gentle shuffle of cards dealt
and ivory mahjong tiles rolled along
a rickety table. good wishes doled out
in exchange for red packets, pinching
and shaking of my cheeks by those
recalling an echo of a child, the
greedy reach of children towards
the glutinous sweets on the table.
waving from the window as the
train-whistle blows, my aunt
presses a packet of faded letters
on me, voice lost to the smoke,
my thanks misplaced in a plume
of salt-spray. I unlace the letters,
thumb the crease, the browning ink,
my great-grandfather’s words to
his brother like a warm touch
on my shoulder: sitting in
the home we have fashioned, I play
with my great-granddaughter.
when she reaches towards me
she undoes the ache of missing
what we have left behind. how
can her tiny fingers bring our lives
into all of spring?
the ballad of the drowned
*
THEN King Arthur let send for all the children born on May-day, begotten of lords and born of ladies; for Merlin told King Arthur that he that should destroy him should be born on May-day, wherefore he sent for them all, upon pain of death; and so there were found many lords’ sons, and all were sent unto the king, and so was Mordred sent by King Lot’s wife, and all were put in a ship to the sea, and some were four weeks old, and some less. -Malory, Morte D’Arthur
*
all drowned, all drowned. we were sent off
with whispers, carrying the sins of the father
yet pure of sin ourselves. forgive me for my
cruelties— we drifted down the channel at midnight
under the eyes of a thrice-crowing raven, I do not
remember crying. my kingdom, my kingdom.
they say he kissed each of us goodbye, I say I lay
down this curse, recursive fate to do my bidding,
drowned, the throne saved. for what is a kingdom
without an heir? my greedy king, filling his seat
at the round table with our spectres, our stolen
adulthoods. I fracture, I deny. my dreams are filled
with half-formed faces. we are the first-born of a
long line of mistakes, Camelot’s roses built on
the sea-bleached bones of our slumber, knights
questing in the name of our dissolved futures—
and so I sing this song, very sad, about myself,
my throat breaking over black rock.
Kwan Ann Tan is a writer from Malaysia and a student at Oxford University. Her work has previously been featured in The First Line, Half Mystic, Porridge Magazine, and L’Ephemere Review, and she can be found on Twitter at @KwanAnnTan or at kwananntan.carrd.co