* — January 31, 2019
the way girlhood feels on the tongue
waferboard, 2012
my friends, we ride around in black
sedans & look back to see how
much dust we’ve kicked up, weaving
patchwork out of metal beer can tabs
& the linings of our stomachs. sound
of rosary, gold-capped molars on
tongue tips as promise. like milk teeth
we rolled ruin in our mouths, over &
over.
tuesdays, we stuffed our bras with
rabbit’s feet & laid hair stiff with
holy water. still, we border fault
lines with our bodies, shake, tremble,
baby powder strung along our inner
thighs like christmas lights as it dots
our ingrowns. skin marbled,
angel-esque. stunning. we skirt
curbsides past someone’s daddy in a
yellowed wifebeater, cigarillo
italicized in the mouth. our nights
like morning, washing machine
cycles as our bodies roll, hot as the
sun. our knees tongue the water in
the local creek the summer before
cholera breaks out. so we dry our
suits roadside, no poker face — only
the full moons of our cheeks, color
of our blood, the oxidized rust of
longing.
Originally published in No Tokens Issue No. 6. View full issue & more.
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Diana Khong is a poet and ghost of the diaspora. She is a 2017 Button Poetry Video Poetry Contest Runner-up and her poetry can be read in PANK, Alexandria Quarterly, and more. She is currently a freshman at Stanford University.