Flèche by Mary Jean Chan

Author:Mary Jean Chan [Mary Jean Chan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571348053
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Versions from the Twenty-four Filial Exemplars

He Lay Down on Ice in Search of Carp

One of the strangest, this: how a boy mistreated

by his stepmother still tried to satisfy her cravings

for carp, sought out the frozen lake and thawed the ice with

bare skin, brought home two pregnant ones

for a pot of soup. At eight, I learnt this from my mother,

offered immediately to outdo this fabled son,

though there was no ice to be found across the city,

our temperate winters incapable of frost.

Years later, I wonder why my mother did not mention

hypothermia or the possibility of drowning, did not

invite me to wonder at the boy’s lack

of self-respect, did not consider how his body

deserved its own morsel of warmth, how his fingers

should never have been bait.

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