Poetry By Eli Yoichi Leadham

spoilt.exile CC





Smell Between Strangers

why can you smell me all the time
but only hear me sometimes
that’s kind of fucked up, right?
no matter how hard I scrubbed, your smell lingered; 
no matter what I ate, my saliva tasted like yours. 

in the mornings, my breath smells terrible 
but between the caffeine, nicotine,
and sleep competing in my system
i strike equilibrium and feel so confident 
i swear I can paint then by noon
i am artless and desperate, drawing 
a prayer out of the air as it leaves 
my wet nostrils 

i pray again, yet thirst
only for silence, for sleep.






My Age

What do we owe each other after 
We’ve kept our heads down long enough
Worked hard enough to ask to be called
The right name. Diligence doesn’t equal dignity

The car ride home was deafeningly silent
My bum was throbbing as you had just 
Spanked me in the middle of the supermarket
For “talking back” to the lady at the register
Who was making fun of your accent and
Your name: Yumiko. You meee co.
I watched you being treated like a child
And in return, I was treated like an adult
There was Sum Ting Wong

My older sister and I were leaving the movie theater
We were about ten and thirteen when a white couple 
Opened the door to enter as we were leaving
We assumed the man was opening the door for us, so 
We walked out as he held the door, but before the door shut
Behind him, he said, “I don’t open doors for japs.” 

I just want you to protect me
To soothe all my troubles
But I can't rely on someone my own age







Spareribs

My mom sits on the stool in the kitchen, stirring her pot of spareribs with brown sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar, with regret for a son who chose to play with Barbies over G.I. Joes. Whose wasted the past four years on a degree she can’t pronounce. I can smell the desperation in your sweat that longs for grandkids to make it all worth it. 
My destiny was to yield progeny and accumulate property. 

You'd disown your firstborn if you knew what sins his sins had spawned. Disavowed kissed scraped knees, changed diapers, wiped butts.

Steam rises from the pot like her stories and spices and songs. The scent of home lingers briefly before vanishing. She doesn't know it, but I've been sitting in the corner watching her as the rib’s flesh grows tender. Waiting for that moment just before the flesh burns.

Greasy memories of my mother linger for so long that they loiter in my mind. They set my skin on fire, and I burn. Not like a candle but incense, lighting the soft lace of the air.

An opaque silhouette that betrays my form







The Nonsense Poem

Is a grain of sand a heap of sand?
If you remove a grain of sand from the heap, it's still a heap
But if you remove one grain of sand at a time
What happens when you are left with nothing
You are left with something that can be both a heap of sand 
And not at the same time 

Yes and No
For every rational number that exists
There is an infinitely generative excess,
Of what it is not: the messy, the irrational
What it's supposed to be is what it isn’t supposed to 

Who was I supposed to call the other day?
When was that message sent? 
For I’m not the same person I was then.
And will never return to that there and then.

People, I promise to remember
Forever change the moment they leave.
And every day before.

The sales clerk watches too closely.
Your hometown is not your hometown.

But my friends used to call.

Was Harper Lee Chinese
Was Carl Jung Korean?

Stunted fathers
Neglected boys
The moon recedes
The cat survives
The Pit tastes good

Against the infinite noise of the irrational
Any rational value is nothing. 
So nothing makes sense
So I can hear the sound of one hand clapping
Terrifying but true
What does this mean? What is true anymore?
What survives the Everything Bagel?






On Touch

From a young age, we learn,
To never touch ourselves in public
And therefore never in private.

We become used to the cold touch of the doctor,
The snip of the scalpel, 
The teacher’s ruler, 
The blue hand me downs from big brother. 
 
Our bodies are trained to want this 
We are told that the good life is in reach – 
What good is a body when all I want is flesh? 
You can’t touch flesh without a police permit

When the state wants to
Seize your bed and sleep with you
It is not so much that
The personal is political, but that
The party is public.
We are party animals






Mossy

the day shifts 
or maybe I’m just delirious
we talk to each other the way we talk to each other
in the damp fields and moss in your backyard
the luster fades
our bodies fill with sap in the pockets of the world
cold dirt under our hands and heads 
there is a shift
i'm no longer up at 3 am with the screen’s light shining under the covers 

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Eli Yoichi Leadham (they/them) is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University and is an incoming Master’s student in Beijing. Eli holds citizenship in the United States and Japan. They are passionate about disentangling the legacies of colonialism and the patriarchy on queer of color social life.