2 poems

by Esther sun

Los Gatos High School

Shelter

April like an upturned boulder.
I watch the sky grow brighter,

bones curving, layered
magnolia, monarchs fluttering

in a quiet danse macabre —

stark Manhattan streets / gurneys like boats / eyes and masks / light /
like America’s / stripes through / slanted blinds /

president at podium / Asian Americans spit on
in the streets / perpetual foreigner / eyes and mouths

it has been unusually long

since I’ve spotted a spider
in the bathroom ceiling corner,

so this morning when she appears,
branched legs a soft insistence

on normalcy, I pause mid-brush
and find I have no voice to call mother,

no breath to want her gone.

In the living room,
my father sweeps the hardwood floor,

murmurs to himself, ​I didn't have
a chance to say goodbye.

Self-Portrait with Violin Strings

Yesterday, my mother painted the beige walls
of my childhood home blue. For the rest

of daylight’s hours, I saw nothing else. Now
I hold this hue on my tongue like rain over topsoil

and take it with me to the worktable, to taste as I read
& write through the night. In history, Patrick Henry

directs the convention to revolution. In English,
John Proctor defines his own justice. When does space

shift into distance, silence into absence of music?
The violin strings thank my fingers for their hours

of service, their tips blooming darkly while my mother
types alone in the next room, pianist fingers working

the keys hard. We once filled this house with ourselves.
But now — a flattening of the October sky.

I sift for counterpoint in the night’s dying duet
until only its shell remains.