January, 1890 by Heather Qin (15, New Jersey)*

​Yuxuan, when I was young, 
           there was a cavern in the Sierra Nevada
Where my brother was crushed by constellations
           of burning dynamite. I escaped
only to return next spring, 
           to find his body under slabs of snow.

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Sallowed, his thawed blue fingers still gripping tools
           and rope, now stiff 
I kept working— I was young then,
           free like all creatures in bloom.
Yuxuan, how free were we then, in America?
           we were born small and swollen and yellow,
Monsoons howling hardship in our veins.
           We wished so much to save, waiting.
It devoured us then, the promise:
           Generation by generation. 
Yuxuan, you must work until your sockets bleed black
           until no one can reach and paint rainwater on soft palms.
Until marrow empties of minerals, and your spine,
           phosphorus-starved, ruptures itself brittle.
Then, hopefully a tapestry of blond bruises
           Plum-blistered and frostbite-etched—No longer a holding close. 
America must know the weight of mountains we fought
           of our own blood— the fractured flesh of the Sierra Nevada,
now a hollow chasm in its belly for metal snakes and silver-swindlers
           She must bear witness, and she
must struggle. If not with what she owes,
           But what she took. From your uncle, and from my brother.
From grandmothers and wives. From both of us.
           That they sent us into limestone cliffs
As they pumped each other full of bullets at Bull Run, at Antietam.
           That suffering is your inheritance from your father,
From America as she ran west 
           across our buried bodies, chasing a god
From an America that cannot save— their gratitude
           ​and my brother both.

​