Sojourn Chimera

Two thousand miles in the future
& we forget our name
We are shed from the whistling
White snapping of bones bending
Fraudulent moons dripping 
A thickness like milk
& we keep walking

Somewhere the stone is thrown
& gin bleeds the sins of night
The men hunger not for warmth
Just the nirvana of fire thrumming
Through their veins

Say I’m sorry my skin sings for home
Say I want to submit to nothingness
Say mercy like a bullet

On the Macedonian border
The black eyed prisoners
Knife the mouth of barbed steel
They serve to protect, to brand us
The slaves we are, blind
To sensation; we run

Ribbons like camellias raped
By the scythe scaled wind
They say this is freedom;
Cut our tongues from
Curved nativity; our home
A forbidden curse censored
Senseless; we pray not for peace;
Just for an exit where there is none.

Aleppo, we are unmarked graves.
Turkey, we are nameless corpses.
Macedonia, we are exodus erased.

In America we are dreamless gods,
Myths hung by clotheslines to a newborn star.

Say refugee, say peace, say nothing.
The mouth chokes on our convulsing truth.

Author: SerrinA Zou

Serrina Zou is a junior at Basis Independent Silicon Valley in San Jose, California and a 2019 California Arts Scholar in Creative Writing. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, Just Poetry!!!, the Asian Pacific Fund, and the Bay Area Book Festival. When she is not writing poetry, she is either catnapping or avidly devouring novels.

Artist: Feixue Mei

Feixue Mei is an interdisciplinary artist and an Assistant Professor at Northwest Missouri State University. She is fascinated by mass media and internet culture. Her work explores diverse media such as publications, videos, performances, illustrations, comics, and installations, and examines how they may be used to address such context as globalization, cultural manipulation, language adaptation, intimate relation, as well as fluid identity.