Cassandra Hsiao

Cassandra Hsiao is a Malaysian-Chinese Taiwanese American poet, playwright, and screenwriter. Her poetry has been recognized by Arts by the People, Storyscape, Brain Mill Press, LiveWire, Animal, Rambutan Literary, Feminine Inquiry and more. Her plays have been selected as finalists for national playwriting competitions and are produced across the country. She received her bachelor's degree from Yale University in Theater & Performance Studies and Ethnicity, Race & Migration. She currently works in TV development in Los Angeles.

Ulu-Ulu

ulu-ulu means rural means unknown means black hole means drifting means wandering means crooked footsteps means off the path means shiver means foreigner means i am not supposed to be here means no hands to hold no pulses to sync no eyes to catch means hunger means primitive means eat with hands means soil means dip into ground means rustic means dark rendered speechless means starless night skin means muffled means disappeared means not a soul.

Full 

I think about her cheeks at night. Silhouette of her profile projected on my ceiling. How when she smiles there are two U-shaped shadows on either side of her face. How when she doesn’t the fat melts into her cheekbones. How in her childhood she scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed with bleach. “You’re like porcelain,” someone once told her, and I had to cross my fingers to keep from tapping her ceramic face. See if the clink of my nail could crumble her. When she cries, something breaks open in me. Like the wolf swallowed another stone. Or small melon. Or coconut. Or egg. Holding life within a thin shell. How can someone so fragile carry something so heavy? I ask her to lay down her burden. Break open a coconut, unblock her pores. I bite down on white cheeks. See what catches in my teeth. 

Yearnings 

I wake to your mornings sweetening inside me. For you I will feed our soil: curled beans sleeping in wrinkles, each parsing the meaning of old. these are our four sons: naked seedless strawberries, half peeled bananas, bird-scattered corn (each kernel a habit lost to the winds), tomatoes sweet as the candies in your cheeks. We teach them to grow with their heads turned to the sun. Nature teaches them to keep secrets: elegant growth, body geometries, floral friendships. Our sons teach us to stop watering when the sun is high. They teach me how to garden blind. Teach you how to shake dirt from your boot before entering the house. Teach us how to reckon with the quiet. Say to us, be still. I echo them in my bed at night: be still, my tangled thriving heart. Be still and hear the buddings, gentle sproutings, the sound of finding their way home. Our sons return to compost our knotted souls, food for the plants anyway.