Litany
by Emily Tu
There's a document on my computer littered with
fragments untouched and unlaunched
such as the one about carved wooden boxes covered in red
lacquer or the one about a found diary
with only the inked characters of my father's name legible but then
I get stuck in poems about absences
and a halved, halfway love that I think are too sentimental
though not nearly as blatant as the notes about dinners with my
father and red lacquered women
who laugh when they see how I grasp my
chopsticks which is not a metaphor
about a hyphenated identity like it could be
but rather another piece of evidence for this list that
recites the ways my grievances are cut short too soon
or too late only because I don't know how-where-to
send myself
beyond this dormant chamber.