Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)

1903, Governor’s Compound, Shanghai

Kelley Jean White

Grown darker, her feet are raw, black eyes coax
mercy from Second Mother. Former slave,
she mutters, “it is more profitable
to raise grass than daughters,” twists the ankle,
tears in her own eyes, “Lotus Feet, be brave.”
Oh, to stop binding this child she loves most.
First Wife, wasted by opium calls girls
‘maggots in the rice,' can only hobble
on her rotting feet: night binding, toes curled;
unwelcome moonlight, four sisters huddle.

Kelley Jean White

USA

Kelley White is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School and worked as a pediatrician in inner-city Philadelphia for more than twenty-five years. She has recently returned to her small New Hampshire village and begun work at a rural health center in the North Country. Her poems have been widely published over the past decade, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in several chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently TOXIC ENVIRONMENT from Boston Poet Press. She is the recipient of a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant in poetry.

Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)