diversity of queer women's poetic experience: love poems: Indigo Chih-Lien Som (girl wants girl)

[alexconall]

Lien found the next poem, too.

Just once before I die I want someone to make love to me in Cantonese
Indigo Chih-Lien Som

my mother
tongue not
in my mouth
no longer mine
my second tongue
now my only
one/mother
tongue some
where in me
deep/not
my own

Just once
I want to remember
language I've never
known/Give me words
I never heard
at my grandmother's
kitchen table

Make the tones
fall from my
throat/like
fairytale flowers
& toads/until new
sentences snake
across your skin

let me moan
mothertongue
in your mouth


Indigo Chih-Lien Som is an American-born Chinese woman describing herself as "garlic-throwing, book-binding, shuttle-throwing cancer and fire horse".

Just once I want to remember, Som wrote. Just once I want. I want with you, said Lien; do you want with me?

Michelle bought a learn-to-speak-Cantonese set.


Source: The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women, edited by Sharon Lim-Hing