Ruido

Esperanza’s pelo buena es
no más. (No more good hair.)
She gets it chopped off at Mira’s.

It is sewed and donated,
to elsewhere, for Nina,
for the less fortunate?

For Zhang Wei to sell at the
shāng diàn. Hanging on hooks,
emulating the deer heads on mounts.

He fondles it in a corner, the strong
black straightness between his finger
webs, a stirring inside him. It’s familiar.

He recalls the brush
strokes of Pete Teo,
of wifely beauty.

Father told her “Yo no hablo
Español no more.” So therefore she
doesn’t and it is now Inglés.

Mao destroyed the four olds
so Zhang Wei is no más. (He
doesn’t remember anything.)

Destroy the olds to bring
in the new. And paint
a smiley face on Pu Yi.

Devouring the past,
swishing it around
and then spitting out

certain small portions
to rearrange into a
desirable formation.

Dying over and over
in last words that are
never heard.

By Maria Ng

Biography:

Maria Ng is a New Yorker living in New Jersey. She spends her days writing, blogging about books and zines, and going to college. She often writes about mixed identity (Afro-Latina and Chinese), memories of family, living in New York, fearing of what’s going to happen in the future, relearning and forgetting languages, and lonely fictional people that are merely reflections of herself. She has an existential crisis every few months or so and is still unsure of what to do now.

She considers writing a form of healing, protest, and sometimes a violence towards your own self. She writes poetry but wishes to be a novelist. She doesn’t like to remember high school, especially the horrendous fiction and poetry she wrote for her creative writing class.

She has previously been published in Rasasvada, Paper Crown Magazine and some other zines.