from Valerie Hsiung's "outside voices, please"

Valerie Hsiung | outside voices, please | Cleveland State University Poetry Center | 2021 | 120 Pages

from “outside voices, please”

I don’t know how would you even describe this take?

We were outside until 4am I was really fucking tired, needed to get home and take care

of Xixi. It was raining.

I’m not going to move from this spot.

I’m not going to move away from this spot. So you can close your eyes. So you can just let go now

It was like I was a part of this lurid beautiful secret that I alone knew about... It was like after so many years everyone—well, not everyone, but enough of them—finally believed me, my side of it, finally believed enough of my dirty little secret It was like for a moment I forgot that they couldn’t ever possibly believe it

Have you ever properly revisited this?

Well, no, haven’t had the wherewithal.

What it takes for men to become detached enough is ultimately personal The language of lunes

can too turn fear of sleep into energy

I’m not gonna act like this was some Brady Bunch shit it wasn’t. He’s making fun of the
way we talk. Well...

But we did scrape the mold off all that Wonder Bread until the bells came to bid us hello
and off.

I feel cold in all the warm places. Slept in my parents’ bed until I was past old enough.

*

Cry me a moon. Cry me a tree. Cry me a stone.
Cry me a drawing. Cry me a hearth. Cry me a bowl. Cry me a bowl
of oil. Cry me one stone.

Prisoner’s wetdream.
The prisoner who is already free.

Just like that it all disappeared. All of it. But I stayed, we stayed, we never went away.

It’d be interesting to re-do the whole thing but from her perspective...
Now I think of all the things. Of all the men who didn’t take. I can count them all.

See—she’s crying of freedom now as the sun ignites the woods.

A shame it’d be to waste such a fine talent...

Come on.
Say goodbye.
And she nudges the child forward.
One hand on the car door ready to close it and walk to the other side.
The other going over the invisible scar at the end of the road.
Furrows in the brow already of such a young ■■■■■■■■■ woman.
Of course this is not about age but rather the blood lines.
I can’t believe you handled all of that by yourself, that you didn’t tell anyone.

Used with permission of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center
© 2021 Valerie Hsiung

Valerie Hsiung is the author of hummingbird et partygirl (Essay Press), Name Date of Birth Emergency Contact (The Gleaners),YOU & ME FOREVER (Action Books), and e f g (Action Books).