Rhapsody in Plain Yellow
Page 1
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for my mother, Wong Yuet Kuen, 1932‒1994
and my grandmother, Fong Sui Lin, 1907‒1996
Contents
Blues on Yellow
That Half Is Almost Gone
The Colonial Language Is English
Take a Left at the Waters of Samsara
Chinese Quatrains (The Woman in Tomb 44)
Emilies: Aria for My Mother
Millennium, Six Songs
Cauldron
Broken Chord Sequence
Altar (#3)
Hospital Interlude
Hospital in Oregon
Song of the Giant Calabash
Hong Kong Fathersong
Get Rid of the X
How Deep Is the River of God?
I Am Waiting
Libations, Song 10
Variations on an Ancient Theme: The Drunken Husband
Bold Beauty
The True Story of Mortar and Pestle
The True Story of Mr. and Mrs. Wong
The Cock’s Wife
Where We Live Now (Vol. 3, #4)
Blues on Yellow (#2)
Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen
Tonight while the Stars Are Shimmering
Bad Date Polytich, Eight Poems
Bad Date
Family Restaurant (#1)
Family Restaurant (#2)
Empathy
Blues on Yellow (#3)
Folk Song Revisited
Ohio/Ohio
So, You Fucked John Donne
Identity Poem (#99)
To Pursue the Limitless
Summer Sonatina
Horseyear
Rhapsody in Plain Yellow
Notes
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The stain of love
Is upon the world
Yellow, yellow, yellow
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Blues on Yellow
The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve.
The canary died in the gold mine, her dreams got lost in the sieve.
Her husband the crow killed under the railroad, the spokes hath shorn his wings.
Something’s cookin’ in Chin’s kitchen, ten thousand yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie.
Something’s cookin’ in Chin’s kitchen, ten thousand yellow-bellied sapsuckers baked in a pie.
Something’s cookin in Chin’s kitchen, die die yellow bird, die die.
O crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white.
O crack an egg on the griddle, yellow will ooze into white.
Run, run, sweet little Puritan, yellow will ooze into white.
If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write.
If you cut my yellow wrists, I’ll teach my yellow toes to write.
If you cut my yellow fists, I’ll teach my yellow feet to fight.
Do not be afraid to perish, my mother, Buddha’s compassion is nigh.
Do not be afraid to perish, my mother, our boat will sail tonight.
Your babies will reach the promised land, the stars will be their guide.
I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins.
I am so mellow yellow, mellow yellow, Buddha sings in my veins.
O take me to the land of the unreborn, there’s no life on earth without pain.
Rhapsody in Plain Yellow
That Half Is Almost Gone
That half is almost gone,
the Chinese half,
the fair side of a peach,
darkened by the knife of time,
fades like a cruel sun.
In my thirtieth year
I wrote a letter to my mother.
I had forgotten the character
for “love.” I remember vaguely
the radical “heart.”
The ancestors won’t fail to remind you
the vital and vestigial organs
where the emotions come from.
But the rest is fading.
A slash dissects in midair,
ai, ai, ai, ai,
more of a cry than a sigh
(and no help from the phoneticist).
You are a Chinese!
My mother was adamant.
You are a Chinese?
My mother less convinced.
Are you not Chinese?
My mother now accepting.
As a cataract clouds her vision,
and her third daughter marries
a Protestant West Virginian
who is “very handsome and very kind.”
The mystery is still unsolved—
the landscape looms
over man. And the gaffer-hatted fishmonger—
sings to his cormorant.
And the maiden behind the curtain
is somebody’s courtesan.
Or, merely Rose Wong’s aging daughter
Pondering the blue void.
You are a Chinese—said my mother
who once walked the fields of her dead—
Today, on the 36th anniversary of my birth,
I have problems now
even with the salutation.
The Colonial Language Is English
Heaven manifests its duality
My consciousness on earth is twofold
My parents speak with two tongues
My mother’s tongue is Toisan
My father’s tongue is Cantonese
The colonial language is English
I and thou, she and thee
My mother is of two minds
The village and the family
My mother loves me, I am certain
She moulded my happiness in her womb
My mother loves my brother, certainly
His death was not an enigma
Yet, it, too, had its mystery
I had willed it in my heart
I had condemned him in his crib
When I touched his round, Buddha face
Drank in his soft, infant beauty
Cain and Abel had a sister
Her name is Tiny Pearl
Too precious to be included in their story
Her small throat trilled in vain
The Tao of which we speak is not the eternal Tao
The name that we utter is not the eternal name
My mother is me, my father is thee
As we drown in the seepage of Sutter Mill
Take a Left at the Waters of Samsara
There is a bog of sacred water
Behind a hedgerow of wild madder
Near the grave of my good mother
Tin cans blossom there
The rust shimmers like amber
A diorama of green gnats
Ecstatic in their veil dance
A nation of frogs regale
Swell-throated, bass-toned
One belts and rages, the others follow
They fuck blissfully
Trapped in their cycle
Of rebirth, transient love
Unprepared for higher ground
And I, my mother’s aging girl
Myopic, goat-footed
Got snagged on an unmarked trail
The road diverged; I took
The one less traveled
Blah, blah
I sit at her grave for hours
A slow drizzle purifies my flesh
I still yearn for her womb
And can’t detach
I chant new poems, my best fascicle
Stupid pupil, the truth
Is an
oxymoron and exact
Eternity can’t be proven to the dead
What is the void but motherlessness?
The song bellies up
The sun taketh
The rain ceases to bless
Chinese Quatrains (The Woman in Tomb 44)
The aeroplane is shaped like a bird
Or a giant mechanical penis
My father escorts my mother
From girlhood to unhappiness
A dragonfly has iridescent wings
Shorn, it’s a lowly pismire
Plucked of arms and legs
A throbbing red pepperpod
Baby, she’s a girl
Pinkly propped as a doll
Baby, she’s a pearl
An ulcer in the oyster of God
Cry little baby clam cry
The steam has opened your eyes
Your secret darkly hidden
The razor is sharpening the knife
Abandoned taro-leaf boat
Its lonely black sail broken
The corpses are fat and bejeweled
The hull is thoroughly rotten
The worm has entered the ear
And out the nose of my father
Cleaned the pelvis of my mother
And ringed around her fingerbone
One child beats a bedpan
One beats a fishhook out of wire
One beats his half sister on the head
Oh, teach us to fish and love
Don’t say her boudoir is too narrow
She could sleep but in one cold bed
Don’t say you own many horses
We escaped on her skinny mare’s back
Man is good said Meng-Tzu
We must cultivate their natures
Man is evil said Hsun-Tzu
There’s a worm in the human heart
He gleaned a beaded purse from Hong Kong
He procured an oval fan from Taiwan
She married him for a green card
He abandoned her for a blonde
My grandmother is calling her goslings
My mother is summoning her hens
The sun has vanished into the ocean
The moon has drowned in the fen
Discs of jade for her eyelids
A lozenge of pearl for her throat
Lapis and kudzu in her nostrils
They will rob her again and again
Emilies: Aria for My Mother
(SHATTERED SONNETS, SERIES 1–3)
My soul upon a messy Eucalyptus
a condor’s eye view
(she, too, a dying species)
I am propped horizontal
hands on chest
white silk blouse to throat
Rouge: blue unguent
pink matte
a bullet of passion
I wear as an amulet
a centimeter from my heart
Amazing Grace Yeah amazing!
no questioning of whose God
Which dharma? Whose stupa?
The requiem is a freeway’s susurrus
a tap/tapping of the nails
Signed
sealed
delivered
I’m yours
trill Stevie’s blind hymnal
into the
Digger’s Distant Earphones
O the blue consciouness of ox
His flanks bleared from my gaze
(he doesn’t have a pension)
Nor
should I give a damn now
O the sky and the science of wilting
asters chrysanthemum gladiolas
ecstatic colors
white blight bright purple
Bled Dyed
in Suzuki’s giant hothouse
the lapels the wrists the ardor
just a shredded hindrance
More to sweep away
Illumination
is death’s eldest daughter
False Modesty I bloomed too late
My poesies My liturgies My mantras
My clay tablets My dull writ
l776 ditties
in a faux cherry ossuary
Me and silence
and some strange race WRECKED!
The Great Mother manifests
The Great Mother hidden
All ye all ye all sent free!
One shaft of white light
then another
another
O minions and
thralldoms
O the great pomp of living and dying
The secret of the fly whisk
is the fly
wringing wringing his hands
the fat one fondling my ears
the thin one measuring my head
O holy holy choir
the living Baching with the dead
first sassed Billie
then Janice
now Aretha murrrrmurrrs
the sticky wicky icky
ko-ans
of love
Millennium, Six Songs
I.
Black swollen fruit dangling on a limb
Red forgotten flesh sprayed across the prairie
Parched brown vines creeping over the wall
Yellow winged pollen, invisible enemies
Boluses without homesteads, grubs without a voice
Burrowed deeply into this land’s dark, dark heart
Someday, our pods and pupae shall turn in the earth
And burgeon into our motherlode’s bold beauty
II.
We’re a seed on the manure, on the sole of your shoe
We’re the louse trapped in your hank of golden hair
We’re the sliver that haunts beneath your thumbnail
We’re the church mouse you scorched with a match but lived
We’re the package wrapped, return address unknown
We’re the arm lowered again, again, a bloodied reverie
We’ve arrived shoeless, crutchless, tousle-haired, swollen-bellied
We shall inherit this earth’s meek glory, as foretold
III. (FOR LEAH, MY NIECE)
They gave you a title, but you were too proud to wear it
They gave you the paterland, but you were too lazy to farm it
Your condo is leaking, but you’re too angry to repair it
Your dress has moth holes, but you’re too sentimental to toss it
You’re too bored to play the lute, it hangs on the wall like an ornament
The piano bites you, it’s an eight-legged unfaithful dog
Love grows in the garden, but you’re too impudent to tend it
A nice Hakka boy from Ogden, so hardworking, so kind
The prayer mat is for prayer, not for catamite nipple-piercing
The Goddess wags her finger at your beautiful wasteland
A dream deferred, well, is a dream deferred
IV. (JANIE’S RETORT, ON HER FORTIETH BIRTHDAY)
The same stars come around and around and around
The same sun peeks her head at the horizon
The same housing tract, the same shopping center
The same blunt haircut: Chinese, Parisian, Babylonian
The same lipstick: red and it comes off on your coffeecup
The same stars come around and around and around
The same sun tarries in the late noon sky
The same word for mom: Ah ma, madre, mere, majka
The same birthbabe: bald, purplish, you slap to make cry
The same stench: mother’s milk, shit and vomit
The same argument between a man and a woman
The same dog, hit by a car, the same escaped canary
The same turkey for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year
The same three-tiered freeway: Istanbul, Tokyo, San Diego
The same hill, the same shanty town, the same lean-to
The same skyscraper: Hong Kong, Singapore, Toledo
The same soup: chicken
, though the veggies may vary
The same rice for supper: white, brown or wild
The same stars come around and around and around
The same sun dips her head into the ocean
The same tree in the same poem by the same poet
The same old husband: saggy breasts, baggy thighs
The same blackness whether we sleep or die
V.
Whoever abandoned her grandmother at the bus stop
Whoever ran in and out the door like a blind wind
spinning the upside-down prosperity sign right side up again
Whoever lost her virtue in darkly paneled rooms with white boys
Whoever prayed for round eyes
and taped her eyelids in waiting
Whoever wore platform shoes
blustering taller than her own kind
Whoever sold her yellow gold for Jehovah
Whoever discarded her jade Buddha for Christ
VI.
Why are you proud, father, entombed with the other woman?
Why are you proud, mother, knitting my shroud in heaven?
Why are you proud, fish, you feed the greedy mourners?
Why are you proud, peonies, your heads are bowed and weighty?
Why are you proud, millennium, the dialect will die with you?
Why are you proud, psalm, hammering yourself into light?
Cauldron
General Yuan Shih Kai
your horse went mad.
He danced a ribbon