MICHELLE QIAO

Spoken Word | Leland High School, San Jose, CA

There is No Prayer for You, Chang'e

The goddess Chang’e flies to the Moon as her husband shoots down nine suns in pursuit.

Most of the time, she sleeps tethered to the Moon Man’s cheekbone—

look up, and imagine her eyes

born addicted to the man that binds her feet and tightens her tongue and whitens her skin

until she cannot move

until she cannot speak

until her face snaps

into the dust, swallowed so deeply

Neil Armstrong steps on her ring finger.

Buzz Aldrin her face.

Luna-9 misses her hair by half a leg.

Her husband sits on Mars and tosses her

a mooncake, drinking rice wine from a clay pot.

His temples thank him for Earth’s one Sun

but there is no prayer for you, Chang’e.

Only cake.

He gives her a rabbit for company. It pounds

the elixir of immortality in a mortar, gives it

to her to drink, pleading live another day!

she replies: to eat another cake.

My grandmother bought me that rabbit, a little plastic one I dragged

around on a string. She paints the black eyes back on

when they chip, ties the whiskers for me when they tangle

tells me to keep it close—

I lose it.

She says it must have slipped back to the moon

tells me to look out for it just in case it ever decides to fall

all the way back down.

Before the one child policy packed up

my missing aunts and missing uncles

my grandmother’s mother had too many children.

She’s less than five feet, body thin

sent in a basket to an English orphanage

growing up already settling in the silt between waking up in her bed

or a casket, trying to find faith in the empty bottoms of bowls—

I'm alive, which tells me that miracles happen.

Her mother took her back

boiled one more cup of water in their rice to raise her.

She didn’t graduate the tenth grade

which tells me her father said why educate a girl

when an education can’t feed her.

I look up at the moon and ask Chang’e why she doesn’t throw down cake

when she has seen my grandmother starving

and she tells me that sometimes

it is better

to starve

than to be forced

to eat.

I like to imagine she tugs

her heart by the bones of her hand

my rabbit at her heel

and plunges in, snaps the strings

in half

cranks open his third eye to spit

a mouthful

in his face, saying

Don’t give me cake

get down

on your knees

and pray.

Gift from God

My name curdles in my mouth, syllables swarm

together, beaded ants at soft fruit, my name

river bridged among oaks when it rains

born from the death of China’s first emperor

buried at the base of a mountain.

My other name, French, picked off a list of

Top One Hundred Baby Names for Girls 2005

solely because it rolled off my immigrant mother’s tongue

which confuses bathtub for bashtub, super bowl

for sugar bowl. I wasn’t named for myself.

I was named prepackaged grab-and-go for America

to consume. Top One Hundred Baby Name for Girls 2005

is so sweet, she means gift from God

never flies off the handle bat crazy, giggles

at jokes, drives with hands at ten and two

rolls hot off the cookie pan cut and crimped but

how can I be a gift from a God I don’t know?

My last name—they pause in roll call. Look up

look back down, and most of the time

Top One Hundred Baby Name for Girls 2005

is kind enough to save them. She’s perfected the art

of raising her hand cut them off fast say here

but on other days, I sit back and start the gambling

I think I’ve heard it all, but creativity is a thing that blossoms

in error, consonants baptized in vowels, crucified

between teeth, ten years running and they say my name

like soggy saturday cereal spooning dead skin from a scab.

When my paternal grandfather taught me my times tables

he told me he used a single piece of paper eight times: front then back

pencil then red then blue then black. My grandfather, who was frail.

He had one tooth. He looked like how I imagine the old man

who was shot by soldiers on a boat on a river on a page

of a book he once gave me to read: San Mao was an orphan.

He lived in war. He had thirty cents. He had three hairs on his head.

He had the old man. His old man was shot.

My grandfather looked like the old man.

My grandfather was very sick. My grandfather was very far

from America. My grandfather was very far from me

when he died

I wrote my name front then back, pencil then red then blue then black.

The goddess of mercy sits in heavenly palace

with feet propped up on the moon—

and I’m all the way down here, nails bit clean off

thinking about the saltwater river I’ll spit out

for dinner. I cannot tell if she is unwilling or cruel.

When she asks me why I still talk to the dead I cut

my thumbs and show her the blood. I write my name

and show her the page. When I ask her to bring him back

she looks down through the heavens with her willow

branch in her left hand and vase in her right, shaking her head

as if I had honestly expected anything different.

She tells me an emperor does not die

for his tomb to be wrenched open at your mouth.

My grandfather did not die for me to forget.

I promise myself I will keep my name

tuck it deep in my throat

river bridged among oaks when it rains

paint my self-portrait as

gift from God turned mad little girl

and I tell them

say my name.