Ellen Zhang

Couple Moments Beyond Ellis Island

You want to annunciate when wires falter, ask for help.
Instead, days of darkness in a damp apartment. 

You hang your first snowflake from the roof of your tongue,
search for warmth in unknowns, hum away electricity bills. 

Do you believe white lies from roof to roof.
Your own voice says that everything is fine. 

Your mother’s voice distances, cradling static.
Dial tones flicker of home, reminders of longing. 

Next to the other warm bodies in the factory, you
still feel only cold. Your forehead taunts with worry.

Hands sewing, every stitch searching for relaxation.
Such precision and tightness even with pin pricks. 

Sometimes, you watch the welling against finger. Taste
your own blood. This is the closest thing to anchorage. 

Cockroaches tease your apartment. They do not scare easy
anymore. They teach you more than anyone else. 

When you see parts of yourself walking down the street,
you do not acknowledge that you are lonely. 

Chicago air shuffling, you notice only daylight,
color of pigeons, ruffling of feathers intensifying. 

Fingerprints like visa stamps, flimsy film of ink lasting,
crumbling against corners of your lips. Taste of intrusion. 

When you close your eyes, feel that salt grazing
your arms. Reminder: no promises can survive that sea.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Ellen Zhang is a student at Harvard Medical School who has studied under Pulitzer Prize winner Jorie Graham, poet Rosebud Ben-Oni and poet Josh Bell. She has been recognized by the 2022 DeBakey Poetry Prize, 2022 Dibase Poetry Contest and as 2019 National Student Poet Semifinalist. Her works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appear or are forthcoming in Rappahannock Review, COUNTERCLOCK journal, Hekton International and elsewhere.