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Sa Pa

HANNAH HAN
Our children bathe in river water.
They drink out of soft
styrofoam cups
and eat half-hatched
eggs, a sheen
of oil coating their upper lips,
slivers of newborn
feathers falling from
their teeth,
embryonic beaks and lips
gasping for their
mothers’ tongues.

We feed our children
youth in handfuls--
shards of beef
wreathed in green beans,
eggs bleeding yolk and scallions,
and hand-harvested rice like
bits of crushed jade.

We squat around an earth-dug
stove as thin-ribbed cats
thread between our feet,
fat, rope-tailed rats
drooping from their delicate
tongues.

We watch our children’s throats
shiver, white,
hollow as winter sun, and
we ache to give them more,
as our mother-river,
our hands, mouths, stomachs,
fill with Coke cans broken like
river-worn shells,
naked bones of starved cows, and
splinters of plastic bowls,
still streaked with the greased trails
of small fingers.

Outside our children steer the oxen
down dormant rice fields, their ropy arms,
quick sandalled feet, and young bodies
learning.
They play in the river mud,
and taste the humidity on their tongues.
They laugh.
Hannah Han is from Los Angeles, California. She has received recognition for her writing from the National YoungArts Foundation and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and her work has been published in The Jet Fuel Review and Sine Theta, among others. In her free time, Hannah enjoys drawing, eating churros, stalking Goodreads, and sleeping in.
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  • Home
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  • Issues
    • Issue I
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    • Issue III
    • Issue IV
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