Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Something of Her Oxygen” by Liliana Yao.

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Something of Her Oxygen

By Liliana Yao

snow inserts itself in the yard

like ellipses

opaque and blank

neat

like a heartbeat pestering for a choreography of correct breaths

between cursive steps toward an evening that swells into midnight

where the last constellation crimsoned into a legion from

groping for the corners of the sky

blood smears into poinsettia petals

or a thousand tongues

shrink back

like her shoulders narrowed into wrists

still in Mom’s outstretched arms

bracketed away from

worms nibbling our swollen long melons

and the lattice of bones

beneath the salty white flesh of mackerel

with these fistfuls of lettuce

bunched onto the plate

back into the shape of a head

turn the sky over

let the world become a kaleidoscope

not patchwork

in my hands

let the lettuce shrivel

outdancing

making something of her oxygen

that now belongs to me

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Copyright © Liliana Yao

Liliana Yao is an undergraduate student in the Honours English Literature program at the University of British Columbia. Her critical-creative work engages with the intersections of gender, race, and disability across contemporary literatures. She grew up in Toronto, Ontario.

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