the blueshift journal

YELLOW FEVER IS A DISEASE & NOT A POINT OF PRIDE

Jasmine Cui

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Mother was wúyǔ, they say

I inherited her: nose, ears, lips.

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Taut skin, jaundice colored. Men

mistake affliction for ingots; body

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for conquest: gold,

glory, God. They say

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they are sick

with yellow fever.

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Tongue is divination stick,

licking salt runes into

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my chest. Confused

mouth calls 悲1 ​ ​love,

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calls 草2 sex. Oceanic,

my chest is full of gunpowder.

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I am swollen sea cleaving

self into ions.

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Lysis, the body spliced

into multiples to feed

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five thousand. All Asian girls

are made of the same: jade,

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parasols, rice, stoicism. I want

my own Lucy Liu to split

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open like flypaper. Call

my silence willingness

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not protest. Call me

没有名称3 not beautiful. 

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--------------------------------

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1 melancholy

2 grass

3 nameless

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~

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Jasmine Cui is 17 and is majoring in Political Science, Economics, and Violin Performance at SUNY Geneseo. She aspires to be like her parents, who are first generation Americans and fought an extraordinary battle for their place in this country. Her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and has appeared in The Shallow Ends.

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To America

Nshira Turkson

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my sister slammed the door on my fingers so hard one

almost broke and mama whispered sorrys and

it will be okays so close to my hand that her breath picked

up a little of my blood that day I cried more than when daddy

left he went to America and said he will send for us soon he is

getting the house ready it’s a castle he says big doors and a

white fence with red balloons and a walkway and shiny wood

floors for me to practice my turns on mama said he flew on a

plane as big as our house and the neighbors put together I heard

sometimes people put drugs up their butts to get into America they

shove it right up and it hurts and sometimes they get sick and

sometimes the little white baggies explode in their stomachs mama

doesn’t know I know that sometimes I flick my fingernail and

remember her shushing into my finger I remember the pain being

a white flash and then gone I don’t even know why I cried cause

I stopped feeling it after a second maybe I don’t feel pain maybe

I could shove one of those baggies up and fly to America I could

dance on the wooden floors with daddy and I would turn so well

people would pay to watch and we could send for mama and

my sister the queen of England and all the presidents mama says

don’t like us would fly in to watch me spin across the wooden

floors like my toes were made of the same brown wood she can

turn so fast they’d say it’s like she is a bright white explosion

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~

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Nshira Turkson was born in Washington D.C. and raised in Springfield, Virginia. She is a Callaloo fellow and her work has appeared in The Atlantic and her university’s literary magazine, The Nassau Literary Review.