id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
aisthesis-3140	Le, Annika	Two Poems	2020	1	.pdf	application/pdf	292	2	-47	Aisthesis Volume 11, 202058 Two Poems by Annika Le Polydipsia Vietnamese words taste pickled in my mouth— saliva pools out from glands like rain gutters in a Saigon monsoon When I attempt to backbend my tongue into unfamiliar tones, my grandmother’s forehead furls into a question mark, and the uncles burst into contractions of synchronized laughter To me, the glyphs on letters look like ranges of mountains or falling tides that mimic the moon’s loop—they taste meaningless against my teeth On the Lunar holiday, we must wish New Year blessings in Vietnamese before she bestows the lucky red parcels— they sit under her elbow and against her ribs like armor: Chúc m!ng nm m#i What leaves my lips is a windstorm of whispers, misspelled mush, a lotus $ower without its seeds, my jaw now severed like the lost string of a guitar Again, the contractions of laughter, this time from the aunts and cousins, too—it descends from lips and pools on the tile I grab a sponge from the belly of the kitchen sink, and attempt to extract my mispronunciations from the $oorboards Plate of Plums Grandpa said to plant a plum pit and it will split the soil to sprout high Each evening, she cracks the blemished skin, gnaws away at yellow meat, and suckles the seed with her tongue till every pocket clears of $esh and it lays white like human bone in her palm With a toss, she whispers wishes and the ferns tuck the pit away into their pockets In early mornings, she checks her plot of land as though it’s a wristwatch but all that’s new are dabs of dew on grass blades from the sleeptalk of clouds.	cache/aisthesis-3140.pdf	txt/aisthesis-3140.txt