• About
    Masthead
    Contact
  • Archives
    Issues
    Poetry Fiction Nonfiction Interviews
Ligeia Picture
Ligeia Desktop Picture
  • Submissions
  • Search

The Flower Shop

By Stephanie Yue Duhem
Fall 2020 | Poetry

In the coliseum of years,

I see him straddling some ruin,

my Po Po’s brother with the cicada husk eyes.

The light through those shells was grey,

as the light through those shells was grey,

too, that dusky December day

in Nanking.

A one-star general before he was starred

with bullets, Po Po’s brother would have a few

good years left when the shells screamed

through the city, in unison with

men and cicadas, the husky choir

of war; he was Po Po’s one

male sibling,

the star of their name in jeopardy.

That time he was saved—lifted from the fire

by a girl who desired him through the panes

of a flower shop window, he the only

man amid petals of ash and dust

neither fatal nor wet rust red, yet,

the one thing.

But now—in the coliseum of years when

the light shies away, with his shoddy

shell eyes, he can’t tell

chrysanthemums in a glass

from a glass jar full of tar, or

the bullet points of his life from those of

his killing.

He saved only what

he was gifted: that

he met his wife among flowers,

in 1937, in Nanking.

(Still he

hears her

beckoning.)

Stephanie Yue Duhem is a 1.5 generation Chinese-American poet and educator. She was a winner of Red Wheelbarrow's 2018 contest (judged by Naomi Shihab Nye), a Radar nominee for Best of the Net 2020, and a finalist in the Glass Chapbook Series 2020-2021. She is online @nameandnoun and www.sydpoetry.com.


Other Works

The Reconfigure

by T.W. Selvey

... What I am characterizing is only called Figure ...

Read More

Come to life

by Rae Rozman

... how do you know when you’ve reduced a self / to nothing ...

Read More

LIGEIA

About

  • Masthead
  • Submissions

Archives

  • Issues
  • Poetry
  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Interviews

Follow

  • Twitter
  • Instagram

© 2024 LIGEIA Magazine. Designed by Sean Sam.