2 Poems by Esther Sun

Sister

After Catherine Pond

What if August never ended.

What if August never began.

What if wild mushrooms grew large as oaks in my backyard 

……………and the moon a small white heart in the haze.

What if I did things differently.

What if I was light through the shutters, foaming.

What if I could set fires with my fingers.

What if I could help you sleep.

What if in the mornings you unwrapped pear trees 

……………like peace offerings, forgiveness. 

What if in another room I sliced up elegies, 

……………placed them gently in pianos’ mouths.

What if for weeks I went for midnight runs to make my limbs feel useful.

What if I took bullet trains away from you, from LA to Xanadu.

What if you were less steady, a large oak tree mushrooming hills.

What if yours was the night’s bright heart.

For years I let no one touch me. I had myself

……………to preserve. But what if tomorrow 

I could eat pears with you slowly, piece 

by piece, in a wind-washed spring. 

Quiet catching in our throats.

Seven Retellings of the Myth of Chang’e and Hou Yi

I.

Divinely beautiful, Chang’e 

lives with her husband, 

Hou Yi, in the heavens. 

After his salvation 

of the Earth, which leaves 

nine of ten suns dead, she 

swallows too much 

Immortality to make up 

for what is lost. She floats 

to the moon. He cannot 

bear to shoot her down.

II.

In the heavens, Chang’e 

works for the Jade Emperor 

as a servant girl. After breaking 

a porcelain jar, she is banished 

to Earth, where she meets the mortal 

Hou Yi. Where rice fields look 

like grass sprouting from mirrors. 

When he grows hungry 

for divinity, Chang’e swallows 

the Pill of Immortality in exchange 

for everything. She floats 

to the moon. He aims and fires.

III.

Beautiful, almost divine, Chang’e 

lives in the mortal world

as a palace maid. Every night, 

pillars catch flame in her dreams 

until one day Hou Yi,

the archer, topples them 

with arrows the size of spears. 

Holding Immortality on her tongue,

Chang’e floats to the moon, though 

she still sees burning in her sleep.

IV.

Ten suns torch 

the Earth. 

He brings nine 

to their knees. 

On the moon, 

a cassia tree 

refuses to mourn 

for anything.

V.

On her way to the moon, 

Chang’e time travels. Steals 

silphium from 5th-century Rome. 

Learns the Kaddish at a synagogue 

in Williamsburg. Tells herself 

an eternity without him 

is still eternity. Loss

without having truly had him

is not loss. Is not. Is not.

VI.

As Hou Yi draws the bow string

to his ear, he remembers the pillars, 

the porcelain, the mirrors.

VII.

Divine, almost beautiful, Chang’e 

swallows Immortality and floats 

to the moon. For hundreds 

of years, the lanterns mortals light 

for her from Earth look 

like small fires, like arrowheads 

in an open field.

Esther Sun is a Chinese-American writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she received a Gold Medal Portfolio Award in the 2021 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as honors from the National YoungArts Competition and Bennington Young Writers Contest. Her poems appear in DIALOGIST, Cosmonauts Avenue, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere. She attends Columbia University as a John Jay Scholar.

28 February 2022