Mother, do you remember
what they said about the kid
molded in your image? Beautiful
like his creator! Quiet as
women when Goddess Nǚwa pulled
us from mud, blinding cycles of sin
through ambition! Remember me
asking dumb questions? Like “Why
isn’t the surgery called an Aurelian-section?”
I can’t even imagine the pain! Oh, what good
mothers would give to kick their sons in the shins
He’s a good kid she reminds herself like sperm donors
and fathers have been just don’t count your eggs
before May flowers like pilgrim kids in the new year
dead at spring without antibiotics or our aborted
fetus aka your first grandchild. We went broke for the
vacuum while they asked Are you sure? No sir
not at all, but she still did it squeezing hands
of a stranger, screaming Matthew, the name
you gave me at birth, when we were
physically dispersed, God’s “gift”
to Earth, middle name for sex, I beg
my princess to shout King Charles
when we come, First of His Name
House of Zhao, good genes as well
one day you might see, I’m okay
Long Live Us All! Be well!
Click here to read Matthew Zhao on the origin of the poems.
Image by Geronimo Giqueaux on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Matthew Zhao:
My poem, “Long Live the Queen,” appears in its fourth or fifth iteration, yet the only constant between drafts is the first line: “Mother, do you remember?” Fittingly, this line serves as a memory, some vestige of my past that continues to stay with me, whether I like it or not. Without choice of what memories resurface, this poem explores themes of love, loss, and lineage, through the lens of relationships I had with the women in my life at the time of writing — my mother and romantic partner. The poem’s concrete form has no real significance, on the other hand, and I can only say that this was the shape the poem took as I put fingers to keyboard. On some level, each subsequent shift was an expression of my feelings that the poem was growing distant, and that I needed to grasp it and reign it in to find an appropriate ending.
Matthew Zhao is a PhD student at Florida State University and an assistant poetry editor for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series, Mississippi Review Prize, and Airlie Press Prize, and a semifinalist in the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and others. His poems appear in swamp pink, Four Way Review, Frontier Poetry, The Offing, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere.
Latest posts by Matthew Zhao
(see all)
