Introduction by Grace Ma and Gavin Cheng

We had the pleasure of reading Emily Liu’s two poems for this Matter issue, and readers, you are in for a treat!

Liu’s first poem “Mulberry Stains” explores the pain of saying goodbye to your childhood home. What does it mean to have it exist only in memory? She begins by characterizing mulberry stains as a reflection of her home, her community, and the joy of sharing, growing, and picking food that her family can eat. She highlights how the good times spent in that house will always be remembered with a hint of bittersweetness. In her old home specifically, fruits and vegetables came fresh from the backyard. Although the house may have seemed far from perfect to an outsider, that home helped her flourish into who she is today. She then goes on to say how urban development has demolished her childhood home as construction companies dug into the ground and “Instead of fighting nature’s persistence, / they choose to erase our tree’s existence.” That home and the families surrounding it will always be part of Liu. Her second poem offers readers a completely new take on her writing.

In “A Heavy Toll” Liu expresses her passion towards environmental preservation by taking us through the horrors of bottom trowling in our oceans. Liu’s poems both address the core idea that humans prioritize development over preserving nature’s gifts. She describes the process “Like a storm tearing through a luscious field, / leaving only a barren disaster,” giving the ecosystem no time to recover before it is repeated again. This piece is both informative and emotional as it walks us through the process while giving a voice to the wildlife that suffers from heartless human practices. Each of her line helps to show the intensity of the practice and the permanence it leaves on our society. 

Mulberry Stains

Wind blusters against oval, serrated leaves.
It grips and tugs, pressuring the weak stems
that feed the ripening mulberries
struggling to cling on.
As the berries surrender the losing battle,
they detach and fall;                                                                                                               
A path of scattered stones beneath awaits.

Worn with regular footprints and nature’s paints,
ridged slabs of stone draw a map,
laying the trail towards home.
Coarse brown dirt interweaves the stone,
where grass grows and ants resurface.

I recollect my upbringing in Fujian, now a sixteen hour flight away.
My home was shined on so brightly it burned,
the only shade brought by looming trees
and under the cover of night.
Fujian soil nurtured our fruits and vegetables–
Persimmon, apple, lychee, mulberry,
each brightly colored fruit brought color to our enclosed community,
each savoured the sun more than any human could.
Squash, watercress, white cabbage,
each grown by a different family but shared together as one.

Our families gathered each summer night,
shaking a giant of a tree with our hanger retriever poles;
Used for laundry, plastic grapples atop of a light-weight stick
clamped onto branches.
With only a slight jerk of the hand,
Berries shook and detached easily.

Overripe mulberries connected and bled,
leaving dark purple splatters as evidence.
They dried into stains,
painting the coarse, brown dirt.

The ones that stay whole
promise simple sweetness.
Without washing or care,
they jump into our mouths
to cool us from the Fuzhou summer heat.

Only now, the same city surrounds two halves,
easily distinguishable by development.
As construction dominates nearby,
our old stone paths guiding the dirt
contrast with freshly poured white canvas;
our three-story community
contrasts with glass skyscrapers ruling the city;
our simple berry tree pressed berries to our windows,
yet from above shrinks into an unintelligible dot–
blurred into the business of the city.

The same community that once held generations of families,
that once bloomed conversations daily,
now separated across the city,
pushed apart by new construction.
Along with that faded the joy,
the joy of gifting plentiful, oversized zucchinis and cucumbers,
the joy of watching Monkey King
on a community 13 inch TV under the moonlight and evening breeze,
the joy of knocking on 10 doors in five minutes,
collecting friends to play in the river.

We were no exception to the urbanization,
impeding towards us.
During construction, the developers knew
the stubborn mulberry stains
would continue to seep into the concrete,
that is if our tree was still standing.
That is nature’s design,
programming mulberries to anticipate
soft dirt to envelope their seeds.
Instead of fighting nature’s persistence,
they choose to erase our tree’s existence.

So as the buildings are struck down,
the mulberry-stained machinery roars
against the audacity of the roots,
when dirt paths are finally suffocated with concrete.
Our blackberry tree is replaced
by a lifeless, stain-free fountain.
Enveloped by a pristine canvas,
glistening, where no life dares to emerge.

A Heavy Toll

Foreign, heavy nylon nets drag along the seabed.
Hungry, greedy, undiscriminating.
Full of man-engineered mechanical power,
the boat tied to the net dominates the ocean waves.
The small, fast-moving, snagging squares
graze coral reefs like pebbles,
sifting through water like air,
striking the sand upwards like explosions.

Like a storm tearing through a luscious field,
leaving only a barren disaster.
Light struggles to pierce through the thick curtain of sand,
to reveal the smallest of fish that slip through the net’s wrath–
left to grieve over the vast emptiness.

Again and again,
Before life can return and begin to dream of flourishing,
An engine hums above once more,
Threading along another thickly woven nylon net to catch ‘loose-ends’.

Bottom trawling, designed to catch cod, but instead
disrupting hundreds of species,
displacing billions of sediments,
clouding meters of the seabed,
suffocating millions of animals,
stealing days of light from plants,
discarding tons of once alive, unwanted fish, like waste.
Their home becoming their resting place too soon,
unnatural deaths marked by our hands.

*

Emily Liu is a Chinese American who grew up in Fujian China, then moved to New York City. She is a Junior at Stuyvesant High School, living in an age where there are more issues than one can bring awareness and change to. As a student passionate about biology and ecology, she often learns and observes human impacts on the environment on a global scale, and also on a personal scale. She hopes to bring awareness and action towards fighting environmental issues, big and small, through poems.