Lisa Usani Phillips

three poems

Alias

Grandfather gave me 
a Chinese name,
an alias no one knows
but family:
Lishan in putonghua,
common language.
Lisan in tufa,
mother tongue
of the Guest People.
Lisha if you are Grandma.
All written the same.

Li, graceful,
mei li de li.
S(h)a(n), coral
swaying in the sea.

Precious Jewel

Sian, Precious Jewel:
not worth much when you’re starving.

Sian, my mom’s name
when she was sent, age seven
or eight, to Changgao Chun
where revolutionaries
forced her grandparents to confess
crimes they did not commit
burned everything
they did not really own
save the occasional half-
chicken from neighbors
who had to hide
their mercy.

Sian, her father’s favorite 
singer of songs unknown.

Sian, back in Bangkok
where Guest People
took Thai names
to blend in.

Usani is hers:
also Precious Jewel,
also mine, 
tucked carefully
between my English names
like a secret password
or a seed.

Bittersweet

                                   Celastrus orbiculatus: pretty decorative

highly invasive red berries

non-native gold husks:

highly Asian   good-luck colors

hybrids not widely reported pretty wreath for your door

      (C. scandens) wrist-thick liana

in the field; perhaps girdles tree trunks

                  hard to identify snakewise

Lisa Usani Phillips is the author of Guest People (forthcoming in 2022 from Wheeling Tern Books), and writes poetry and prose with two workshops, Fabrica Poetica and the Ediths (named after classicist Edith Hamilton, who published her first book when she was in her sixties). Lisa’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Beacon Street Review (now Redivider), Current Biography, riksha: Asian American Notes and Images, and Salt Magazine, among others. She has received several honors for her writing, including the Emerson College Emerging Writer Award for MFA students. For more, please visit her author website, lisausaniphillips.com.