My mother cowers on our tattered couch her long black hair a stage curtain My father looms, disco mustache, pompous pointed collar. His voice knifes her. Words so well-honed. I am three years old, standing off stage in Wonder Woman Underoos. I taste my father’s resentment, its oily slick across my baby teeth, but my mother’s helplessness melting cold and wet in my palm prompts me to leave my post. I step on stage, hold out a tissue to dab my mother’s cheek. My eyes widen– Surprising sting of her slap. Together we watch tissues flutter recklessly between us. My mother whimpers I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. What else can she say? Only the lines she was given.
Zia Wang is Indian-American and part of the third generation of her family from East Africa. She completed her undergraduate degree in English at Princeton University and her medical degree at NYU. Her poetry has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, MORIA, and Wilderness House Literary Review and was selected as second-runner-up in the New Orleans Review Poetry Contest 2023. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
12/19 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Kristen Renee Miller / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free
12/19 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Kristen Renee Miller + Arsimmer McCoy / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free
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So much here. Literally breathtaking poem. I felt the slap.