Performance
Amy Gong Liu
I decided that
it was finally safe
to rewind the tape.
It was a church
solo that I practiced
for all week
back in 2007.
I wore some
old thing to sing
about poverty
while strings of blood
ran down the side
of the walls and pews.
It smelled like
applause and
a premature lunch;
some auntie had made
something in tin
that gave me my gag reflex
and my inability
to name.
I can’t tell if the sound
of the applause
in the video comes
from the hands strategically
placed outside
of the frames
or if they are sounds
that I have clipped
into the years
after the fact.
You see:
I didn’t know
what pity was.
I still went to
school to think
about something
bigger than myself.
I believed in auras.
It was the sort
of time in a life
where, as a child,
I could tell my mother
that I loved her
as simply as I could
joint my elbows,
draw my own knobs,
and hear the sound,
knowing only
the things that
were clear.
Amy Gong Liu is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has been published in Poetry Northwest, The Rumpus, RHINO Poetry, The Rupture, and more. She thinks too much (or perhaps too little).


© Variant Literature Inc 2021