Don’t Flip the Fish — Shiyu Zheng

    According to an old Chinese superstition, flipping a fish may bring misfortune like a boat capsizing at sea.

Grandmother warns low, but Mom does it anyway.
  She flicks her chopsticks, two wooden oars,

reaching their tips under the torn, picked-over belly
  and flips, turning luck on its back.

An opaque eye stares into the air, a pearl
  curdled in the throat of the room.

We’ve disturbed its bones.
  Grandmother’s stricken silence seems to say,

a boat will capsize today, if not tomorrow,
  ghostly body flooded and dragged to the seafloor.

She remembers Fujian, waist-deep in tides and kelp,
  gutting silvery fish in morning fog, gathering storms by the bucket.

She remembers a boy who disappeared into the blue distance,
the incessant chatter of crabs between splintered shells.

In the shrine by the shore, she lit incense to Mazu,
  offered dried squid wrapped in plastic,

whispered bargains. The goddess who listens
  only when the smoke bends east.

Now we live among glass towers, balconies netted like cages,
  streets foaming with crowds and the neon tide.

Tonight, we eat what we’ve grown not to fear,
cast away with our own soft lips what we no longer name.

Above us, the night yawns open,
  its palate crackling with bitter salt,

but nothing breaks.
  We remain afloat in the room’s pale light.

Tails turning in our stomachs,
  anchors dragging through our sleep.

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Shiyu is a contradictory runaround. She is an athlete in motion, a musical lover with a terrible voice, an apple enthusiast, and a falsely nostalgic historian. In her free time, she enjoys scribbling, listening to music, and bouncing to Queen behind a locked door. She is an alumna of the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference, and her most recent works are forthcoming in The Blue Marble Review and the Eunoia Review.