Reclaiming the Porcelain Doll

Reclamation.

Past.

The San Francisco Railroad Company conducts a violent symphony.

I hear the sing-song, hum-drum melodies of engines and generators.

I ensconce myself in the howling wind. listen to the echoes of our ancestors.

They sing songs of digging, clicking, exploding, picking, and cementing.

Chink. Chink. Chink.

Sounds familiar?

Their spirits mourn in silence, so we search for their voices.

Lift their souls out of the ground. Recover their relics, buried beneath the dirt. the cement. the rust.

We unearth their graves only to find unhealed wounds.

The child sleeps in a blanket of Agent Orange.

The girl sells her body to a serpent.

The woman bleaches her skin, erasing shades of umber, chestnut, and bronze.

How do I carry their burdens on my shoulders?

Shall we mourn with them?

Is it okay to cry?

I leave these questions unattended.

We are the children of war. of ships that carry broken promises of land mines. of men with guns. of train tracks that lead to nowhere.

I hide those memories.

Instead,

I remember my grandmother, swatting flies with her woven slipper.

my aunt and her mango trees.

my mother and her perfume. how it smelled of tears and the American Dream.

Goodnights under soft silk. Sweet Dreams. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Is this nation my cocoon?

Listen to my ancestors.

Listen to me.

Listen to our voices.

Present.

I do not kiss like gentle tides.

nor will I ever be the girl of your technicolor dreams.

I am Singaraja’s shorebreak.

Never the shore.

I am Dewi Ratih, Goddess of the Moon.

Never the alter girl.

I am the Dragon. The Phoenix. The Tiger.

Never the maiden.

Never another man’s beacon.

Watch me burn the empires of our colonizers.

My earthquake chest can crumble an entire metropolis to the ground.

I will steal back the land, culture, and pride you stripped away from me.

This legacy will live on with ferocious longevity.

I produce crescendos,

roaming beneath emerald currents.

drifting above our nations.

cascading through wind.

I paint the patterns of Batik on your skin.

We heal each other’s souls.

A new season of cherry blossoms.

A crown of gemstones and jasmine.

Lily-pad hands, terracotta skin, and lips that taste like the Pacific Ocean.

There is strength in our gentle kindness.

Soft as a ruby melody,

the shivering chaos.

Sharp as a warrior’s blade.

In our world of yellow and gold, society’s mosaic rules shattered into a revolution.

From the Trung Sisters to Gabriela Silang,

We are the untold history of our generation.

We are the voices of today.

We are the future.

-Lora Supandi

Poem by Lora Supandi

Photographed by Jessica Yeung and Sarah Ohta

Modeled by Sarah Ohta, Jianna So, Phoebe Yao, Danielle Limacoo, Christie Hartono, Michelle Bae, Phoebe Kim, and Bear (Lia) Kim