Two Poems by Iris Cai

Bakersfield, CA

The entire drive, heavy rain gifts lightning
as a hairline fissure in the horizon.

Sixteen years ago, you shielded
your eyes with a baseball cap—crumpled
in the backseat, away from these roads. You thought
your smallness could hide you from the night.
You had other kinds of armor then.

They gave you a lucky bracelet for your first month,
wiry gold and tooth-marked. Swept into pieces
during an argument. For years, each time
you caught a glint in sidewalk rivulets, you imagined
another splintering.

Half-empty suitcases jangle with each turn
of the wheel. You never know exactly
how much to bring—once, your suitcase spilled its seams.
You packed so many clothes, it felt like
you were packing your life away.

Outside, the dark desert grass is cowless, untouched.
Every tree bent in wretched agony, reaching for
home. You suddenly knew your mother when she stood
in the doorway watching you leave. The clouds
can rain and rain but never touch the bleeding fields.
You pull into a gas station and weep.

Eventually, you gather your keys, unspooling
inside city lights, in the embrace
of a distant mountain. You are headed towards
the sun, a milepost somewhere along the road.

Somehow the sky is just big enough to hold the plains.
Know this, and drive.

*

Painted Bodies We Give Up

Single-swiped lottery tickets and late night
walks to the convenience store. America
striped with lakes and rolling hills, city upon
steel city. My father and I, we are sharp
and foreign as lightning rods, seeking out
Illinois’s tiny Chinatown despite driving
two thousand miles for a change of scenery. Here
are familiar voices. Every breath is a scattering
for a bird plucked dry. My skin is tough
now, seared by relentless California sun
and slurs at beer-stained street corners.
I stopped being angry years ago.
We climb Sears Tower and my father points
to cars on the highway, headlights a constellation
beneath us. In the sky, cowherd and weaver girl
join hands. I don’t tell him all I see is red
candy, a spangled prom dress. I wonder if
likening folklore to consumerism means
I have finally assimilated. I am mistaken:
the next day we are given wrong directions
at the mall. We wander through a gift shop
of patriotic paraphernalia. This handheld flag
for five dollars, this case of body paint. It will last
two hours in the sun, maybe three.

*

Iris Cai is a junior from the SF Bay Area. She is a 2024 YoungArts Award Winner with Distinction. Her poetry has also been recognized by the Poetry Society of America and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, and published in or forthcoming from On the Seawall, Neologism Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. An alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, she is co-editor-in-chief of Eucalyptus Lit. When she’s not writing, Iris plays piano and takes too many pictures of her cat.