Parent, grad student, writer. I write stories about Asian American women, their parents, and their children.
Indiana limestone (a poem)
This WeekBy this time next week, I will be in my new home in Cincinnati, Ohio. After more than a year of waiting, working, and advocating, it is finally time for a new chapter of my life to begin. My brain and body are very tired (because I spent the day moving boxes and also, uh, refinishing a not-small piece of furniture that I acquired yesterday, and also, uh, acquiring another not-small piece of furniture, I PROMISE I WILL STOP NOW) so here's a poem I wrote a few weeks ago that is at least tangentially about moving away:
Indiana limestone
Precipitated from the bones and teeth and shells
of ancient creatures swimming the warm inland sea,
now gilding monuments to capital and empire,
and raising the halls of learning that brought us here seven years ago,
Indiana limestone emerges at Allen’s Creek
in middens of crinoids and geodes on the shores of Lake Monroe.
I take from my pockets nine stones:
crystals split open, sandstone and river rocks from somewhere I’ve since forgotten
(Red River Gorge, perhaps),
a stone from a desktop fountain that I burned out by leaving on over the weekend,
upon which I’d written rest in an act of naive optimism.
I arrange them in a silent prayer, and rise, relieved of their burden;
I am leaving now.
But it is not so easy to leave limestone behind,
for the calcium carbonate ions wash out in the rain,
(a dissolution, if you will)
before leaching into the lake that gives the town its tap water,
and crystallizing back into the bones and teeth and shells
of those who call this land home.
I carry Indiana limestone with me in my bones,
the way I carry the consequences of loving him,
even after I leave;
at least for ten years
until my bones replace themselves.
What I'm ReadingLet's be friends on Storygraph, the non-Amazon version of Goodreads that comes WITH CHARTS ABOUT BOOKS! I just finished We Carry the Sea in Our Hands by Janie Kim and it is the absolute perfect blend of science-magical realism, i.e. made-up but plausible scientific concepts in a realistic setting, and a small to medium seeking family closure story, i.e. not a multigenerational family saga a la Pachinko, and it has salt slugs! I told a friend about this book and he asked if I wrote it lol. I did not! But it's a really good structural model for a story germ I've been fermenting for 8 years about the ability to bottle sleep, so I'm going to try and hammer out a skeleton for that (probably) short story. I then tried to read Permission to Come Home by Jenny T. Wang which is about reclaiming mental health for Asian Americans and got to about page 20 before I threw it out the window and decided I needed something MAYBE LESS HEAVY right now. So I'm back to reading middle grade dragon books and lesbian romance. AcknowledgementsI'm drafting the acknowledgements section of my book little by little every week. Thank you S for the inspiration and encouragement to write and for matching my geek in so many surprising ways. |
Jennifer Duann
Parent, grad student, writer. I write stories about Asian American women, their parents, and their children.
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