Teen Sequins 2024
Juliana Xinwen Pan, Age 14
Bio: Juliana is a 9th grader at school in Issaquah, Washington. She was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and, ever since she discovered poetry in 7th grade, she has loved conveying her emotions, thoughts, and overall perspective on the world through poems. In the past, she has received gold and silver keys from the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards. She also received the 2024 Top 15 Foyle Young Poets Award. When she is not writing, she also enjoys golfing, playing violin, and drawing.
Elegy With or Without Honor
Your eyes sting from the money
your patience is burning. You pray
over your grandmother’s grave–its roof
tiled cobalt, traditionally Chinese, haunting
the ivory pillars preserving the sacred marrow
inside each buried bone of cash.
You watch your children pour sour wine
over her grave, watch your mother
discipline them. To pray—to knock their heads
against the moss-rotten stone, pretending
they care—for someone less than a stranger, someone
whose grave you set cakes on—knowing they will waste
to rot—but no. Your mother glares at you, eyeliner
bolding around her eyes. She will eat them
in the afterlife. Bring me honor. Years later, you would
wait for your mother at a Din Tai Fung restaurant.
The lips of the fine China teacups she once haggled for
at a Shanghai street market after praying in the temple
as a little girl—they chatter over her absence. She is
late. She will never arrive. You stay. You order her favorite
steamed dumplings—but she’ll never eat them
again. Now, glazed in sickening black, you don’t
burn money. You don’t stream wine over
her dead body. You don’t pray for her safe passage
into the afterlife. But a photo of you and her creases
into a million folds in your leather wallet. But
you ponder over the reflection that fills the jasmine
teacups on her birthdays. But you order her
steamed dumplings, wondering, “Is this the taste of honor?"
.