POETRY

Winner of the 2024 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York

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By Erika Jing     VOLUME 57 No. 3

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Running into the mountains, they tied red ribbons around their necks
to scare the wolves.

They’re afraid of fire. We have fire around our necks.

I retraced my steps down the pitched path

until I found my mother asleep. I found her in the stable
on top of a hay bale, next to the horses. I found her
not in Tianjin but the dew-wrought fields of Mongolia.

I found my mother, tracing her feet through quilted dawn,
steady against the roadside, the rolls of fabric bumping into
no one but the gasps of trees, as they crackle and find love
beneath ice. She unrolls the fabric until the trees are puddled under sun.
On dirt, she watches other vendors wheel by racks
of red coats, the schoolchildren glance past on their bikes, the mothers buy
flour with necklaces under their sweaters, until
the dribbling trees have hardened again. I follow her footsteps,
thin soles padding, the rolls swinging home, her throat
a patch of gold against blue blue night.

I found my mother, peanuts swelling in her pockets,
cheeks forgiving the rot
of winter, reddened by baijiu.
Her mother loved peanuts, but she was months away

slips of skin
flaking between
cloth between hands.

I found my mother outside in a blanket of snow. Her grandfather
sent her out as her sisters slept. She mixed the dregs of waking
with dirt and corn to feed the pigs.

I found my mother’s hair burning in Beishan. She was the only
girl, clawing up the fences. The boys fought for fire tongs to
curl her hair. On New Year’s Eve, she wore a string of glass pearls,
her hair twined through like a smoking ribbon.

I found her, entering a maze sown through with watermelons
unsettling the horizon, their bellies heavy,
cream-colored on leathered shoulders. Late, as
hands picked nonstop and feet
slowed beneath dirt, I found a wooden cart.
Inside, opening a watermelon—my mother,
the sun smeared around her lips, trickling,
beading into a loose white shirt.

I found my mother, and she did not find mine.
The past does not mind the future.
How do I find my mother
without finding home?

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ERIKA JING writes and studies history and literature at Williams College. She is a junior editor at Sine Theta Magazine.


VOLUME 57 No. 3