Rhapsody in Plain Yellow
Page 2
around the character for “chaos.”
And oh, such a character
it was.
Oh grand master,
won’t you let the light in.
This human destiny,
scroll and colophon,
painterly and evocative—
is the greatest masterpiece,
dark as it is.
There are horses and chariots,
Chin’s terracotta soldiers,
vengeful pale ghosts.
The men—chivalrous and virile
behind forged armors.
The women—forebearers of sorrow
in soft cloud chignons.
The cauldron is heavy—
our bones will flavor the pottage,
our wrists will bear its signature.
As the kingdom’s saga trills on,
familial and personal,
the great panorama of Loyang
blusters in its silent gallows
and the war-torn vermilion glow
of eternal summer.
There is my granduncle
plotting to sell my mother
for a finger of opium.
There is my grandmother
running after him, tottering
down the grassy knolls
in her bound feet
and unraveled hair.
Her cry would startle the ages.
Meanwhile, the chrysanthemum blooms
shamelessly, beautifully,
confident of a fast resolve.
Yes, all would fructify notwithstanding—
all which is beautiful must bloom,
all which blooms is beautiful.
My grandmother’s cry would chill the gorges,
remembered by the caretaker of pines
in the Shaolin monastery
and the young boy taking the tonsure,
remembered by the blind sage Vitapithaca,
his acolyte the King Monkey,
the Sandman and the pusillanimous pig,
remembered by the Emperor of Heaven
and the Yellow Prince of Hell.
O Goddess of Mercy, why have you been remiss?
I have burnt joss sticks at your ivory feet.
I have kept the sanctity of my body
and the cleanliness of mind.
I have washed my heart of bad intentions.
And she hobbles, down past the oatgrass,
past the hollyhocks and persimmons,
orange and fragrant in their wake,
past the buffalo trough, past her lover,
whom she would not name,
past the priest and his valley of carillon,
and the red, red sorghum of her childhood.
Past the oxen and her family ox
in a rare moment without his yoke,
past the girls chattering behind the sassafrass,
and the women bathing and threshing hemp.
Past the gaffer-hatted fisherman
and his song of the cormorant.
Oh shoulder thy burdens, old cudgel, shoulder them
in your brief moments of reprieve and splendor.
My grandmother ran, driven by the wind.
The pain in her hooves, those tender hooves,
those painful lotuses could not deter her.
As the warlord’s bamboo whip flailed
over the unyielding sky,
and the Japanese bayonets flash
against the ancient banyans,
all history would step aside, grant her passage.
What is destiny, but an angry wind—plagues and salvages,
death knocking on your neighbor’s door, and you dare look out
your window, relieved that you were spared for another hour.
So gather your thoughts, brief butterfly, your water clock dries.
Shallow river, shallow river, how shall I cross?
Footsteps so light, the fallow deer can’t hear her.
Heart so heavy, the village women would sink a stone
in her name each time they crossed the shoals.
The soothsayer in the watchtower espies her.
O destiny-in-a-whirlwind, serpent-in-the-grass,
she inches toward her ailing half brother.
Dragging feudalism’s gangrene legs;
their kind is wan and dying.
The child on his back, limp with exhaustion,
answers to my grandmother’s call.
Night will lower its black knife,
only the lantern will bear witness now.
The bridge is crossed. My mother is saved.
Her hemp doll dragged downstream by the river.
Broken Chord Sequence
ALTAR (#3)
Why cry over dried flowers?
They’re meant to be straw.
Why cry over miniature roses?
They’re meant to be small.
Why cry over Buddha’s hand citron?
Why cry over the hidden flower?
Why cry over Mother’s burnt forehead?
Her votive deathglow, her finest hour.
HOSPITAL INTERLUDE
I rented a red Miata I returned to the hospital
I returned to the hospital and climbed the wall
I climbed the wall through a dim-lit corridor
The dim-lit corridor leads to her empty sickroom
Her sickroom was empty but the moon was full
The moon was full the cicadas were crying
The cicadas were crying her unmade bed in the moonlight
Her unmade bed in the moonlight an eternal stain
I veered and turned but couldn’t find the exit
I couldn’t find the exit I said to my mother
I said to my mother the song is not over
The song is not over you forgot to tutor me
You forgot to tutor me the last secret phrases
The last secret phrases in my rented red Miata
In my rented red Miata I veered and turned
I veered and turned but couldn’t find the exit
I couldn’t find the exit the // rain // in // my // hair
HOSPITAL IN OREGON
Shhh, my grandmother is sleeping,
They doped her up with morphine for her last hours.
Her eyes are black and vacant like a deer’s.
She says she hears my grandfather calling.
A deerfly enters through a tear in the screen,
Must’ve escaped from those there sickly Douglas firs.
Flits from ankle to elbow, then lands on her ear.
Together, they listen to the ancient valley.
SONG OF THE GIANT CALABASH
At the market I bought a calabash
to make my father stew.
He spat and called it bitter,
his sputum seeded the ground.
Out came a giant calabash
shaped like Buddha’s long head.
I baked it with honey and jujubes
to feed my father again.
“Useless girl! I said I hate calabash.”
He slapped his bowl to the floor.
The rains poured down from heaven,
green mists and healing clouds blue.
Again another calabash
rounder than Buddha’s mighty torso.
I mixed it with wild cat and agar
and called it “A Monk’s Mock Lamb.”
“Dead girl! I said I hate calabash,”
he burst into a thousand flames.
His head smashed opened—well, like a calabash.
He perished, headlong into his bowl.
Faint light into a silent altar.
Blue, blue the mist of spring.
The sun shone through her hardy trellis
and danced on his empty bed.
This morning I cut my last calabash,
carved a large bottle-gourd of dreams.
I shall float her down the river
into Buddha
’s eternal dawn.
HONG KONG FATHERSONG
I followed you up Victoria Peak
where you kissed a German visitor.
Then you took her to the Furama Hotel
and bought her a drink with an umbrella.
I followed you into the Red Orchid Room
and pulled your skinny body off of her.
Then you rode that hydrofoil to Macau
shaking your fist at heaven,
lost ten Hong Kong thousand in Pai-gow,
Happy Valley’s your next exit.
You prowled on Cat Street into dawn.
A “Luverly” in Mandarin dress kicked you,
“Can’t buy something with nothing, Chinaman,
haven’t you learned your lesson?”
I dragged you back to Granny’s Wanchai flat
where Mother’s pregnant with Sister.
“I won’t tell the Uncles that you’ve been bad
if you pay me a hundred dollars.
A hundred American dollars, dear Father,
a hundred American dollars.”
GET RID OF THE X
My shadow followed me to San Diego
silently, she never complained.
No green card, no identity pass,
she is wedded to my fate.
The moon is a drunk and anorectic,
constantly reeling, changing weight.
My shadow dances grotesquely,
resentful she can’t leave me.
The moon mourns his unwritten novels,
cries naked into the trees and fades.
Tomorrow, he’ll return to beat me
blue—again, again and again.
Goodbye Moon, goodbye Shadow.
My husband, my lover, I’m late.
The sun will plunge through the window.
I must make my leap of faith.
HOW DEEP IS THE RIVER OF GOD?
How deep is the river of God? They’ll throw us in to drown.
How deep is our love for Mother? The river not deep enough.
Poetry is a vast orphanage, in which you and I are stars.
One robe, one bowl, silent pilgrimage, the river filled with martyrs.
Look for us, look for us, Mister Coyote, thirsting for our thighs and fingerbones,
Wait for us, wait for us, Brethren Condor, to clean the sleep from our eyes.
Guan guan cry the golden ospreys, in the borderlands we cry.
Our little eggs, little eggs grow into big ospreys
To lay little eggs again, guan guan.
Our miasma will ooze through the suburbs and gobble up their minds.
I AM WAITING
I am waiting for my transformation
Breasts to grow fuller, lips to turn bolder
Myopia to clear
Eyelids to fold over
I am waiting for the #26 bus
Between Grant and California
One arrives, filled with noisy Chinese people
So, I wait for another
I am waiting for my prince on a white, white steed
I am waiting for the Fall
The Fall of Falls
A sleepless September
I am waiting for love, the love of all loves
I am waiting for my Lord
I am waiting to unlearn ecstasy
For the cloaca of utopia to gallop over us
I am waiting for the dead to reawaken
How beautiful her sleep, how beautiful
LIBATIONS, SONG 10
Have you filled the cups for libations, my sister?
No, I have no wine, no hen to offer, my brother.
Are there fresh peonies in the altar, my sister?
No, winter is cruel and the petals have fallen, my brother.
Did you cord my hat, patch my jacket, my sister?
No, I have no cord nor rags for mending, my brother.
Did you catch a carp from the river, my sister, and reserved me the head?
No, the river is dry, my brother, where the dead must leave their faces.
Did you marry my friend, the kerosene merchant, my sister? Did he warm your bed?
Yes, I married your friend the kerosene merchant, by twilight our flame was gone.
Why is the cauldron empty, my sister, and no fire to warm the stew?
If there’s no kindling for the living, my brother, would there be flesh for the dead?
Variations on an Ancient Theme:
The Drunken Husband
The dog is barking at the door
“Daddy crashed the car”
“Hush, kids, go to your room
Don’t come out until it’s over”
He stumbles up the dim-lit stairs
Drops his Levi’s to his ankles
“Touch me and I’ll kill you,” she says
Pointing a revolver at his head
The dog is barking at the door
She doesn’t recognize the master
She sniffs his guilty crotch
Positioned to bite it off
“Jesus, control your dog
A man can’t come back to his castle”
“Kill him, Ling, Ling,” she sobs
Curlers bobbing on her shoulders
The dog is barking at the door
“Quiet, Spot, let’s not wake her”
The bourbon is sour on his breath
Lipstick on his proverbial collar
He turns on the computer in the den
He calms the dog with a bone
Upstairs she sleeps, facing the wall
Dreaming about the Perfume River
The dog is barking at the door
He stumbles in swinging
“Where is my gook-of-a-wife
Where are my half-breed monsters?”
There is silence up the cold stairs
No movement, no answer
The drawers are open like graves
The closets agape to the rafters
The dog is barking at the door
He stumbles in singing
“How is my teenage bride?
How is my mail-order darling?
Perhaps she’s pretending to be asleep
Waiting for her man’s hard cock”
He enters her from behind
Her sobbing does not deter him
The dog is barking at the door
What does the proud beast know?
Who is both Master and intruder?
Whose bloody handprint on the wall?
Whose revolver in the dishwater?
The neighbors won’t heed her alarm
She keeps barking, barking
Bent on saving their kind
Bold Beauty
She opened her eyes and he was already within her,
though the lore said that a mere kiss would suffice.
The song distorted on the tongue of the soothsayer—
no need to struggle, he would take her away
on his white, white steed and panniers of riches.
In veils and swathing she would be reborn as queen.
Out in the ramparts the last village seared.
Her parents cried out for their lost girlchild,
“Ts’ai Yen, Ts’ai Yen,” but the sky did not answer.
Her thin jade bracelet shattered into five dazzling pieces,
one for each element that made up the stars.
A constellation of black hair was her last missive.
In antechamber and darkness she feels him again.
The tale is the rapture of the water clock, pain
which burns into pleasure, burns into the hours.
Our heroine turns over and slits the throat of her beloved.
She would avenge her family, her sovereignty, her dead.
She who survives to tell the tale shall hold the power.
The True Story of Mortar and Pestle
for my sister, Jane
Nobody understood her cruelty to herself. In this life, cruelty beg
ets cruelty, and before long, one would have to chop off one’s own hand to end the source of self-torture. Yet, we continue, Sister Mortar pounding on Sister Pestle. The hand refuses to retreat, as if to retreat would mean less meat on the table.
She, Mortar, the presentable one: clean, well-kept, jade cross, white colonial pinafore, shiny knees and elbows, straight As, responsible hall monitor, future councilwoman. She is Yang: heaven, sunlight, vigorous, masculine, penetrator, the monad.
She, Pestle: disheveled, morose, soft-spoken, a fearful dark crucible. She is Yin: heaven’s antithesis, moony, fecund, feminine, absorption, the duad.
The outer child had everything to live for: tenure, partnership in the firm, shapely breasts, strong legs, praise from a few key critics, the love of a good man.
The inner child was denied food, yet food was ample. She was denied sleep, yet darkness descended as day.
Justice was the hateful stepfather. His voice was loud, truculent in their ear, If you succeed there would be no applause; if you fail, there, too, would be silent reckoning.
Listen to that serious pounding of the ages . . . not nocturnal lovemaking of the muses, but the bad sister pounding the good. Somewhere in the scintillating powder we grind into light.
The True Story of Mr. and Mrs. Wong
Mrs. Wong bore Mr. Wong four children, all girls.
One after the other, they dropped out like purple plums.
One night after long hours at the restaurant and a bad gambling bout
Mr. Wong came home drunk. He kicked the bedstead and shouted,