Stephanie Yue Duhem is a 1.5 generation Chinese-American writer and educator living in Jamaica Plain, MA. Her work appears or is forthcoming in PANK, Lunch Ticket, Radar Poetry, and Red Wheelbarrow, which named her a winner of its 2018 contest, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. She is also the author of a picture book titled Robby and the Ice Cream Truck.
not hyphenated but em
dashed —
into the wok,
the yolks pool to a moon
faced girl,
howling at herself,
her yellow mouth
a clarion
de lune.
but what are the right words
for this brightness —
yuè liàng or
jī dàn or
just
something scrambled?
something to be consumed?
—
some mornings
are a tide
come too soon.
i break & i break.