Poem "Becoming A Woman" By Hilary Tham

When I was twelve, my mother initiated me
into the mysteries of becoming a woman
with a pound of rice-paper, the unadvertised
kind made from stalks and leaves, the stubble
after the harvest.



She taught me the art of crumpling,
stretching, folding the sheafs inot
a likeness of Modess-factory-rejects.

"You will bleed
at a special time of the moon."
she told me. "Use these
to preserve modesty and the secret
of your femaleness."

Her mother's way she passed to me
with the few words she had received
at her initiation.

Each full moon I curse the tides
within my body. I abandoned
tradition's rice-paper.

I have forgiven the moon since
Our children came, spores of sunrise
In their new born hands.