KRYSTA LEE FROST

America Has No Face

as if the face in the glass is the one I remember; as if mirrors betrayed the same view; as if tender in

translation; as if eyeless in a crowd; as if every white man could be my father; as if genetically sound;

as if unshaped by assumption; as if defaced by supposition; as if looks could kill; as if the face bore

betrayal; as if stares could disassemble; as if the mirror betrayed memory; as if memory betrayed the

same view; as if every mixed-race half-breed could be me; as if their faces were mine; as if the one I

wore I wore right

from Cryptography

cryptid

sometimes, when the howl

   arrives before the body           the form predates

the shade and shape              the becoming           never realized

     something propels her back           into stasis,

so reaching out           too far,               the woman’s body

  is condemned   to its borders   to haunt the land

.     without herself           an abomination     to be

  in spite of,                     to reject

fragmentation       to crawl through time       hunting

      just wanting                 her old body back

is a closed room       of refusals           no one hears     the throat opening

.   grotesque,   longing           rejects respectability                 the horror is

when     the scream arrives         no one looks up

  until something         is taken away

Krysta Lee Frost is a mixed race Filipino American poet who halves her life between the Philippines and the United States. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Margins, Entropy, Berkeley Poetry Review, wildness, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman.