CATHARSIS by Julie Zhu (Ohio)*

CATHARSIS

from Greek κάθαρσις, the notion of ‘release’ through drama (catharsis (sense 1)) derives from Aristotle's Poetics.

the gods speak of me in whispers
​say I am selfish
insatiable
because I cannot
hold this unfettered
tongue          (it is a dangerous thing / child / to be this loud) 

---

I offer a temperate oath: before I          ((refrain / from speaking / like a good Asian daughter / who doesn’t) light your votives in groveling prayer,
before I          (want too much / of what you can't / or rather / shouldn't)
believe you          (you will hear 


the cacophony
of the misunderstood          (your culture / your family / we are not as you make it seem /
won’t you just say we are / positive & / light & / good)          profane mortals
with no venerated epics or hymns 

​
so          (nevermind / put down your pen / be / loved)
forgive me
let judgment come 
​
when out of a march emerges (your need to be / loved / so self-indulgent)
a song in two octaves
lower than          (those radical american scum / don’t listen)
how it was meant to be sung
​from a distance          (i have given you nothing / to cry about)
the rhoptron bellows and bellows and thunders and 


time          (will tell you / to stop / writing)
to sink into the sanctity
of soil, my last          (time to stop)
drink of wine
from our kylix
my mouth, unbaptized

Gaea does not scorn me. 

She peels away darkness, leaves
only softness for my daughter 
for her daughter no longer
at war, I am someplace
that loves me back 


She cleaves her hemispheres, presses another earth into me, the sky
weightless, she brings forth
a pen, a lost line
of good          (--in silence / you will be this way too)
Asian daughters, voices no longer hollowed
feet unbound          (to bring shame / humor us)
tongues refraining for nothing          (--not even this war / is freedom)
light, for nothing else
is so          (wasted / nothing else so dishonorable / nothing else so reprehensible
for not even your grandmother / can speak
what you write) unfettered, I exhale 

tell me I am not who they say I am 

and so she speaks to me
(with the tenderness of which
she harbors her dwellers)
I should indeed be selfish
insatiable
for dead poets don't speak
in tongues, but in teeth.