3 Poems by Lucy Zhang

Teach Me All There Is to Know

You began as a grain of rice at the bottom of a sack, raw and starchy. One year of congee, fried
rice, furikake rice, plain rice to hollow out. I rolled you between two fingers: white dust flaking
like dried Elmer’s glue, milk bleeding from a nipple, counting droplets a metronome—taping can
encourage lactation, can patch a hole. I tossed you back in, stuck between flaps and threads. I
flattened the edges and wrinkles best I could before fitting the near-empty bag in the trash can,
our Glad substitute. You rested beneath fish bones, onion peels, empty Yakult bottles. Beneath
bloodied tissues, band-aids, Maxi Pads. Hair swept and tangled in clumps, nails split like roads,
globs of skin cells scratched and peeled from eczema-coated hands. Dried gothic-style roses
(used to be fresh, but always dead, yeah? once they’re cut, they’re dead), sponges soaked in oil,
one negative pregnancy test (don’t think too much), a trickle of urine. I fed the world to you.
Flies hovered, like black sesame stars in arm’s reach. Again, I lifted the lid and pressed down to
fit another layer: papery eggshells, cracked coat hangers, moldy excisions of potato. As a grain
of rice at the bottom of a sack, unswollen and unsplit, you stayed.

Cinderella Has Anterograde Amnesia

I wore the glass slipper because my brain shattered every fifteen minutes. I could not recall how
my toes curled in narrow boxes, middle joints hammered and warped. How my Achilles tendon
pulled tight like Saran Wrap, ankles fracturing—like marble, not sunflower seeds—as I glided
over lotus blossoms and cloud-capped peaks. A clean slate: I remembered the fish in the pond,
flesh later filleted and doused in hot oil, magic bones tossed into rice patties for crows to
scavenge. The crow ate a bone and the bone severed its throat and its body flaked into layers of
feather, soft as dust, enough to construct a dress: eyes dried as globes, bones crushed as snow,
the ethereal element. I remembered the dress. But whether I had run down the staircase, crushed
my shoe against rocks, deposited the other in the walkway, I did not know. I ran up the stairs to
start again.

Effects of Prenatal Exposure to Pollutants on Behavior in Later Childhood

I imagined passing down the frizz of my hair, not a dose-response relationship between
polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and white matter surface reduction. I’ve got the illusion of
narrow, cat-like eyes, an inclination of the canthus. Imagine my fetus grown, head propped in her
hands, dragging eyeliner long and up, more cat-like than I’ve ever been. The sky had only ever
been grey, I’d tell her, our gasoline sky, how it reaches ghost fingers through my placenta,
brushes your head, a whisper buried deep within me, skirting my ears. Neurodevelopmental
disturbances come in the form of a spade impaled in dirt, a flat field of grass, fingers pointing at
the goldfish glub glubbing, a miracle—only we’d drown, sink further than ever from ether;
please, don’t trip over the spade while running. Focus is just ignorance, the chlorpyrifos and
smoke swept under the burning gas stove, particulate secrets dissipating. I imagine her growth
spurt, how she might be tall enough to reach these grey curtains, part them with strong fists, see
how thin the air is.

Tags: jeannie colleene, Lucy zhang