Consider Lu Chang
Does Chang feel his teeth falling out?
One... two... three...
His mouth shuts.
How will he speak?
Like the moon
released at last and speechless,
he has lost his descendants.
Life splits—
a rift, a cleft, the half-
light between waking and sleeping.
A quartz-colored dawn rescues him.
The day clears.
Dizzy waves rush to shore.
The factory calls him to work, but
even there, the gap-toothed
partitions in the wall
where the rice bowls are kept
stay empty. It’s another
sad round of layoffs.
How many more will be lost?
How many?
Copyright Credit: Francine Sterle, "Consider Lu Chang" from What Thread?. Copyright © 2015 by Francine Sterle. Reprinted by permission of Red Dragonfly Press.
Source: What Thread? (Red Dragonfly Press, 2015)