golden retriever boy

how many words

my mother would not digest 

for me.

when she instead swallowed 

half the meat of a mango, 

a chewed up slab of porridge,

she says 

was for my name

to be tangible.

a girl born in the year of the dog

who goes on all four

limbs and picks at bones 

beneath the bread basket 

of pork buns.

how bruised the inside of my teeth is

with eat, eat, eat.

my name is pregnant 

with half-digested peaches,

mango pits swallowed whole,

pruning chicken fingers in threes.

my name is a mutt

of two chopstick-fanged tigers.

how i want to gnaw 

at the corner of their mouths

and pick their bones with my milk teeth,

splitting my throat open 

for bowlfuls

of hwachae 

splaying like bok choy 

in the meatiness of my name. 

how the mutt in me growls 

for my stomach to churn

in diagonals for a mooncake

i will lose an appetite over.

how i want everything chewed

to a pulp 

and scooped back up 

like mashed tanghulu 

from the pit in my stomach.

how i want to ring my tongue like a towel

around a rucksack of meatballs.

how i want the second skin of a peach

to wrap my lips in gold.

how i want blood sugar

to pump in my veins.

how i want

to refold myself 

into a fortune cookie for the family. Lucien is a Hong Kong based writer who loves candy stores. His works have been published in the Eunoia Review, Hotpot Magazine among many others. You can find him on Instagram: @delucienal_