THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN
by Lee Jing-Jing
They say it is like a child gone wandering
from the garden. Stepping through the gate
for no reason but to chase one bright, red leaf.
The first time it happened, Lia’s parents
came to visit after, their voice falling and rising
through the walls, leaving behind sticky rice cakes
Even though it was months till Hmong New Year.
I was separating leaf from rice
when my mother told me Lia had quag dab peg,
or what the others called epi-lep-see.
She could be a txiv neeb when she grows up,
my mother said. I hadn’t met a txiv neeb before,
Not until Lia’s second time, and third,
when everyone went over to watch the calling
back of her soul. It was all set up, the live chicken,
the knives. Floor spread with paper for the blood.
Lia twisting on the ground and the txiv neeb singing
Come back, come back home, come back
ABOUT THE POET
Lee Jing Jing is a Singaporean writer based in Amsterdam whose work is deeply rooted in her early experiences and way of life growing up in Singapore. Her poetry and short stories have been published in various journals and anthologies, with her first novel If I could tell you in 2013. She recently released How we disappeared about wartime comfort women during the Japanese occupation in Singapore.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down draws from the same-titled novel by Anne Fadiman about the lives of a Hmong refugee family from Laos displaced to California.
A performance response to THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN will be performed at Late-Night Texting 2019.