where are you from? & questions from Shanghai

he is pot belly sagged in chair,
the melons sweating in cardboard
boxes and Shanghai heat. city
farmer, he never touched dirt
once except for rimmed gut-
ter toes. but he sits in the open door-
way, plastic flaps tacked up like
the waist of his jeans. exposure:
how he is thief of pregnant fruit, how
this air stole a baby and declared it home-
grown. & kids like us don’t know
the difference. between backwater
and the dam holding its torrent, when
both are stagnation. between
two farmers on a street: one city,
one man. Shanghai freckled spit-black
in question: where? and my father answers what?
the syllables clean and sharp like a knife
cutting through the seedless flesh
of his palm, like maybe his blood
can birth melons from the gutter
and prove him home-grown from filth.

By Anna Wang

Biography:

Anna Wang is a high school sophomore from Lincolnshire, Illinois. She has been recognized by the Regional Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and her poetry appears in Eunoia Review.