Xiao Gan
CALL ME DAUGHTER
I wonder what you will do on the dinner where I finally tell you about my girlfriend,
because you have already nailed onto my bedroom walls the rules:
(Girls become wives girls become mothers girls don’t elope with other girls),
because you had me kneel before Sarah since I was an infant,
because there are too many stories of people like me chased out of their own home,
disowned by their families torched alive by friends by fathers by mothers
Don’t drag me cattle prod in hand to the psychologist. I am not sick.
But take me into the graveyard at the bottom of the river and
pray while tucking me into the kraken corals the diamond seabed
Entomb me in a tree- when my hair becomes the bleached seaweed
my mouth skull-like fruits my eyes the dead polar bear’s iceberg
Maybe then you will call me daughter.