Chloe Wong

The Old Lie

Reverse Golden Shovel after Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”

You
find me in the garden—cradle-shot, mud-hot, hard-begging. This story
would
never end with Mother wringing blood from a school dress, if
not
for the body you stand in the brushwood to bury. But you
tell
me you love me. Just not that you’ve hurt me. Or that you mess
with
God-given weapons in the woods. Mostly, the lie’s that you go after quarry
such
as rabbits, and other vermin of the sort. What I don’t hear: with each kill, you rest
high
on the porchfront, scoring ichor from each arm. I mistake the blurred
zest
in your eyes for my reflection, and like the kid rotting at your ankles, I ask
to
come in. I want thicker bandages. Warm milk. Soup. Your house is white, and I’ve yet to see
children
who could pick me up, hold me tight, walk me home. At my beg, less
ardent
hunters would pry these barrel-ribs apart, but you needle
for
an exit; say the bandages are gone; that there is no more milk and soup. And you stress
some
wicked promise between us: once I die, my flesh gets to feed
desperate
fields. So the mulch rises, but I do not stop it, and other lambs eat your well-dressed
glory—
how sweet and fitting it is, to die for one’s country.

Chloe Wong is a junior at Arcadia High School in Arcadia, California. The winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2023 Louise Louis/Emily F. Bourne Student Poetry Award, her work has also been nationally recognized by The National YoungArts Foundation, The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, The New York Times, Hollins University, and more. She is an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and will be part of the Adroit Journal’s 2023 Summer Mentorship cohort. In her free time, she loves spending time with Rusty and Lily, her pet cats.