Featured Poem: Programmed by Carlina Duan

 

PROGRAMMED

Carlina Duan

 

 

it’s in the way the light moves, the doctor explains, as wài pó’s

eyes follow ours in the summer room, as her legs droop

over a wooden chair, dressed in the cotton pants we

placed her in, her chin going soft against our touch, her

mouth puffy with quiet, the times my mother took

wài pó’s hands and folded them within hers,

whispered, ma? ma? wǒ huí lái le, and wài pó let out

an unmistakable groan: a soft horse, trembling. we

all shouted, then— she understands! thinking about onions

and the way she would eat them raw, bucking into each

spicy globe with her teeth, she understands, we pleaded

with the doctor, seeing her again, in that chair, her soft

whinnying, her ankles round from years of sitting in front

of the television with its boxed blue noise of kissing

and whales. but the doctor brings us back to her hair: silver.

to her hands: still. we are thinking about our lucy doll,

her hair braided into fine brown knots, plush body caged

in a calico dress of heather and flowers. summers ago, 

wài pó took a black brow liner and made two thick, dark lines 

above the eyes. women need eyebrows, she’d said, returning 

lucy to us, the doll’s face caught in a perpetual state

of surprise, wài pó migrating to the kitchen away from our

slack girlish jaws to slice a thick head of cabbage, leaves 

wedged beneath her bossy palms to a fine pulp…

now, in the musty hospital room, wài pó sits strapped

to a chair. the doctor tells us it is the light

she is following with her eyes—not our voices, not

our bodies, we’re programmed like that, he says, to follow

where the light goes, and my mother, now, faces her own

mother, sobbing. wrenches wài pó’s hands and presses

them to her face, her nose against her mother’s nose,

shouting, ma? ma? don’t you see me? don’t you see?

 

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 Carlina Duan is a writer-educator from Michigan. The author of the poetry collection I Wore My Blackest Hair, she currently teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is also a PhD student in the Joint Program of English and Education. Carlina directs a short-story workshop for young writers at Neutral Zone, a youth center for creative arts in Ann Arbor. She believes in gardens. Find her online at carlinaduan.com.

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/cduan

INSTAGRAM: @earthtocarlina 

TWITTER: @ccduan