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yellow: a collection of catharsis from over the years

Alexa Malto

yellow: a collection of catharsis from over the years
a collection of poems by Alexa Malto

last night, i realized that


it’s a simple known fact Yellow girls cannot become

poets we are your foreign cardiologist your

human calculator your trash-talking

nail technician your Yellow

doormat to wipe white

soles on. if we try to

be anything else

we are hung by

our collars on

a clothesline

by wide

eyes,

white

eyes. left

to wither in

the sun left to

rot like raisins left to

fester like runny wounds.

we are jaundiced limoncello vomit

stuck on the bathroom floor because

it’s a simple known fact Yellow girls don’t have

feelings. they won’t put up a fight they won’t bite.

so go ahead baby boy, try to stretch your white eyes like

rubber bands, pulling at corners until you’ve torn in half—snap!



when i was a child,


i

drowned my

eyes in tubs of two

percent milk, scrubbed

them clean until all my Yellow

bled out on our bathroom floor. i

cut my mother tongue off with a kitchen

knife, left it to ooze like a bullet wound underneath

my White pillowcase. i stabbed my brain, twisted the blade

until i forgot how Lola folds lumpias blindfolded, how Lolo exhales

White smoke from Yellowing lungs. i shoved two fingers down my throat,

purged the jaundice out of my skin to feel more like Them. i ripped my

fingernails off, picked them raw for barbie baby boys to paint them

a color they approved. please tell me why i murdered my

Yellow self before i turned ten, stabbed her in the back,

mourned her after i saw huang he tears tattooed

onto her cheeks. please tell me why i buried

my native self in our backyard, threw her

screaming corpse over my White

shoulders, made her sleep in a

sea of soil & shame and

was still so

empty.


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