Two Poems by Stephanie Niu
The Shape of Things is Rarely a Line
There is no saying when there will be vast distance
between things and when they will be the same.
I hate and am my mother’s rage. Each city
promises me a new face. The deepest tragedy
escapes as laughter. My mother went alone
on the Beijing trip she planned for my brother.
His visa expired. He sat at home while she sat
nauseous on a bus tour in her own college town.
Too much of one feeling bursts into its opposite.
Haven’t you heard of hate-fucking? Or: a feeling
buoys its mirror. Naming one is like spotting
river-colored fish– if you watch the water
long enough, you might witness the body emerge
just once before it turns away from the surface.
The Magic of Eating Garbage
My mother taught me that being a trash can is hard
but worthwhile. She martyred herself against the scraps.
Pan scrapings went into porridge. She drank days-old
fish soup and beamed when the bowl was clean.
I’ve learned from her; I prepare meals
based on what most recently expired.
Stale chips with old hummus, stews of half-opened
spaghetti sauce, rice from yesterday’s cooker.
Once, I ate a tub of Greek yogurt a week after it soured.
It makes no sense; I went out for a restaurant dinner after.
But I’m still surprised when guests reject
my best offers: salmon filet that’s one day away
from the date! Milk on the verge of curdling!
To rescue mismatched wilting vegetables
into gumbo, stir fry, soup– I want to feed my guests
the magic of reuse. To take what we stop accounting for
and make it into stew– it’s alchemy. The world
tasting, for once, abundant. Brand-new.
Stephanie Niu is a poet from Marietta, Georgia and the author of She Has Dreamt Again of Water, winner of the 2021 Diode Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, The Georgia Review, Waxwing, Ecotone, and elsewhere. She lives on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, where she is completing a Fulbright scholarship on immigration and labor history.
