a decaying sestina+
We tread uneven ground beneath a sky of purple silk.
Near the shore, a sauropod has left its giant tracks
upon our slab of rock. I follow you;
we settle in the largest footprint, hug our knees, talk story.
In scattered tidepools tiny crabs abound
and mark their little sandlots with their busy feet.
In the dream I wring my hands about your feet,
misshapen bones contorted into pretty satin. Sale of silk
and damask with the chance to glimpse them bound
in tiny slippers. The way your managers keep track
of every chopstick bite you eat. Of how they spin your story.
They display you as “unprecedented novelty,” shape a story
of exotic lands, your eyes’ “peculiar obliquity,” your four-inch feet
you cannot use to flee. Your compatriots lay railway track.
You sing inside a gilded chamber filled with mirrors, jade, and silk.
You’re made to walk on broken feet in circles endless as the Silk
Road. But in my dream you sail the Hong Kong junk to me, steal the story
back, rise above the rooftops, soar across the sky where they can never track
you. In my dream you haven’t disappeared. I see against the dragon’s tracks
your unbound feet stretch free, toes wiggling. Your fingers touch the silken
sky; your perfect feet relax inside the ichnite. I hear you in my ear
unbind your story.
* Afong Moy was the first Chinese woman to become famous in the United States. Brought to the U.S. from Guangzhou, China in 1834 by the Carne brothers, she was exhibited as a show until 1850, then completely disappeared from the historical record.
+ After “Deleting Names” by Lawrence Schimel
–
Boston physician Isabel Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and moved to the U.S. at age nine. Her work has appeared in the New York Quarterly, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. She has two chapbooks, Beyond the Galleons (Yellow Arrow, April 2024) and The Pillar Dwellers’ Handbook (Seven Kitchens Press, forthcoming). Find her on Instagram @poetintheOR.