Rhapsody in Plain Yellow
Page 3
“What do you get from a turtle’s rotten womb but rotten turtle eggs?”
So, in the next two years he quickly married three girls off to a missionary,
a shell-shocked ex-Marine and an anthropologist. The youngest ran away
to Hollywood and became a successful sound specialist.
Mr. Wong said to Mrs. Wong, “Look what happened to my progeny.
My ancestors in heaven are ashamed. I am a rich man now. All the Chinese restaurants in San Jose are named Wong. Yet, you couldn’t offer me a healthy son. I must change my fate, buy myself a new woman. She must have fresh eggs, white and strong.” So, Mr. Wong divorced Mrs. Wong, gave her a meagre settlement and sent her back to Hong Kong, where she lived to a ripe old age as the city’s corpse beautician.
Two years ago, Mr. Wong became a born-again Christian. He now loves his new wife, whose name is Mrs. Fuller-Wong. At first she couldn’t conceive. Then, the Good Lord performed a miracle and removed three large polyps from her womb. She bore Mr. Wong three healthy sons and they all became corporate tax accountants.
The Cock’s Wife
In the end of the millennium, the cock is still beautiful.
He crows in the morning in his magnificent red beard.
But the cock’s wife was shorn of her dazzling pink overcoat,
To be bathed in sea salt, laid bare for the imperial table.
Head held high, she feigned ignorance of her own demise.
Her tiny yellow fluffies touched wingspans, vowed to avenge her.
They expounded on dialectical points, lollygaged at The Hague,
Scratched and squawked, pecked at ankles,
but stood silent as the masses devoured her.
Aghast, they fled for their lives,
Then paraphrased her in a fable.
Where We Live Now (Vol. 3, #4)
eternal noonscape
I don’t love you for your savage beauty
not for your pale fragrant flesh,
not for your sun-spectred countenance
and your stars that paralyze the sky,
not for your silver-timbred limbs scarred
by a thousand axes. I yearn for
all you can give me, the wild geese
that wing over the moon blindly.
The white egret on a dunghill stands
on ceremony, on one thin leg,
calling her mate: hello, hello,
we have had a bad connection
since Ma Bell shattered—
cicadas chivvy in the rosemary,
blue jays wreak havoc
on the wires—the frogs in the pond
mock the ocean and its depth:
they cannot know their limitations.
Jacarandas wave their purple dare.
Lush lantana cannot hide
the local banal geckos; the sun sets
on the frontier Korean grass;
at the Aztec watering hole
horses, motorcycles, dump trucks neigh
to the moon; paisley, dizzy succulents,
slipshod hillside robes
expose gray, bruised thighs of the barrio;
large blooms of oleander, star jasmine;
scentless forsythia brilliant yellow.
Vacuous verbena, red hibiscus dance around
the Great Mother’s wide helm,
mouthing the earth’s gaping hollows.
_______
A jumbo jet careens between sun and moon—
a small man controls her destiny,
veers into the vast blue loneliness.
Hello, hello, won’t you call me from San Francisco,
Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Canton, Ohio,
from your corporate e-mail address,
from your turbid moods and peccadilloes?
Won’t you ring me from the netherside
of the universe, from the back entry
of Eido, . . . where the moonscape appears friendly
and truth is not a liability.
Home is the grandest illusion: Papa’s
failed restaurants, Mama’s broken wren
of a neck in the nest’s warm alcove.
Will the thundering bring new rain?
Will I rise again and again
to greet the sun’s bright welcome?
Or will it be another sleepless night
of Prozac and Yo-Yo Ma’s morbiferous cello?
Alone, within you, without you,
in the Southern California morass—
arrogance, ignorance, indifference,
wave after wave the clean hubbub of freeway
delivering me, delivering me
from nowhere to nowhere, the landscape
murmuring between waking and slumber.
Lover, I am calling you
from the southernmost hinterlands,
I am scrawling a long love plume
mocking my own befuddlement.
Crows and wood doves loiter,
orange proroguing trumpet flowers
irradiated and gargantuan,
loose liana creeping up the rectum of a wall.
Hummingbirds drink
from my sanguinary confections
(preferring fiction over truth)
in plastic, vulval-red flowers.
O how their small bodies suspend,
a brilliant trapeze of the soul.
O my little winging bee-bird,
O my beauteous formula,
O Bird, O Bard—how I object
to this feeble corollary!
As you sip this perfect concoction
from my inner brown thigh,
perhaps the creatures will make peace
with these human contusions.
Perhaps Art doesn’t matter—
only happiness, an eternal noonscape
more substance than shadow.
Your limp arm draped over my pillow,
the morning sun kissing it so.
_______
O let the bees make honey from an iron sleeve,
let the grille beneath the house
be their sanctuary. But the wasps
that bear no honey, I have scheduled
Tuesday for their extermination.
Hello, hello, yo! Baby, Odysseus!
Will you return from your ten-year exile?
Could you love me again
in our quiet domesticity?
Penelope Wong’s been waiting with her sad kohl eyes.
Could we mend the fissures in the bowl?
Meanwhile, the ocean roars against the shoals,
twenty miles of La Jolla where
the rich whites live; where sandpipers dance,
their tiny, skittery legs
foraging, pecking, never ceasing.
Another hateful colleague, another disturbing ritual
defines me—that static calamity
spreading from home to divorced home,
welling up, attempting to break
my contemplation:
my skinhead neighbor says
that he believes in segregation,
in racial purity, HITLER ELIMINATED THE JEWS
FOR REASONS OF OVERPOPULATION—IT WAS
BEFORE THE PILL, HA-HA . . . IN 1955,
WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY CITES ‘A RACIST’
AS “ONE WHO IS PROUD OF ONE’S RACE.”
The devil is bronze and he, too, is the flesh of God.
He went on, that little fatherfucker,
blondly in his monster truck,
that barbarian drone, that hard-metal music.
Once, I paid him fifty dollars
for pruning my exuberant loquats;
the muse, extravagant by nature,
self-appointed enigma,
Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See,
with her ambiguous smile and silent condescension,
deigns to immortalize him here.
_______
It may be plausible to asser
t that
phenomena have explanations,
or in laymen’s terms,
they have causes.
In the picture window I yell,
Move it, El Grosso, move it.
He thinks I am saying,
Hello, lover, hello.
Zenfully, zenfully,
he drove northward, gun rack
rattling through blue void.
Zenfully, northward
gun rack rattling
blue void
zenfully
gunrack rattling
blue void
gun rack
blue
void
When my mother painted bamboo
She saw bamboo and not herself.
Gladly, she left her body.
Her body hardened into bamboo.
A fresh breeze made her sing;
And she stood, singing,
One with the forest.
When / my / mother / painted / bamboo /
She / saw / bamboo / and / not / herself /
Gladly / she / left / her / body /
Her / body / hardened / into / bamboo /
A / fresh / breeze / made / her / sing /
And / she / stood / singing/
One / with / the / forest /
Hello, hello,
You had better listen to your moral thoughts,
Ms. Lookeast, Ms. Lookeast,
your mother is the right hand of Buddha,
you’re more like the left hand of darkness,
snot-nosed, tousle-haired;
a persistent 5 o’clock shadow’s
not very comely on a Chinese American woman.
In deep drought, knowledge does not hold water.
I’m slothful, sleepy,
no energy to divert the rivers.
The palm tree shreds a mess near my boudoir.
The rats make remorseful love in the sheaves.
The local flora’s invaded by exotic seedlings;
cacti mixed with imperial cherries, mixed
with woodsy wildflowers, mixed
with cheap bareroot roses from “Home Depot.”
_______
A Chink has moved into their neighborhood
and there’s nothing they can do about it.
A hawk tarries, and the wind chimes call
infrequently: this exile, this malaise,
this complacency. In this motherless desert heat
I am missing you. Welcome, sweet sojourner,
welcome to Chin’s promontory.
No giant statue of Buddha or gilded pagoda
carved in mist; no Mao’s Yenan caves
deep in the rhapsody of revolution.
No majestic Gueilin, no silk route to enlightenment,
no “Red Detachment of Women”—jaded scabbards, piqued bayonets,
pirouette, arabesque, changez, changez into the distance—
but a view of the freeway and the borderlands:
California’s best kept secret. You said,
Your ass, your beautiful ass fascinates me.
So, the birds chirp ming ming,
and the dogs bark hung hung.
A ginkgo traveled ten thousand miles from her homeland
to become a weed tree in the new kingdom,
and another blight cracks through the groundswell.
I wear a watch to bed to remind myself
of my own dying. I nail a calendar on the wall
so that each day shall pass in vain.
Come back, come back, my soul, I summon you,
come back to San Diego. The sun’s so hot
we can fry an egg on the blacktop
and make soap with the lye.
Blues on Yellow (#2)
for Charles
Twilight casts a blue pall on the green grass
The moon hangs herself on the sickly date palm near the garage
Song birds assault a bare jacaranda, then boogy toward Arizona
They are fewer this year than last
Sadness makes you haggard and me fat
Last night you bolted the refrigerator shut
X-tra, X-tra, read all about it
Chinese girl eats herself to death
Kiss a cold banquet and purge the rest
There’s room in the sarcophagus if you want it
I keep my hair up in a bereavement knot
Yours grow thinner, whiter, a pink skullcap
My Levi’s hang loosely and unzipped
You won’t wash, won’t shave or dress
I am your rib, your apple, your adder
You are my father, my confessor, my ox, my draft
Heartbreak comes, again, when does it come?
When your lamp is half dim and my moon is half dark
Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen
Border Ghazals
I.
I hate, I love, I don’t know how
I’m biracial, I’m torn in two
Tonight, he will lock me in fear
In the metal detector of love
Rapeflowers, rapeseeds, rapiers
A soldier’s wry offerings
He will press his tongue
Into my neighing throat
I can speak three dialects badly
I want you now behind the blue door
In a slow hovercraft of dreams
I saw Nanking from a bilge
Some ashes fell on his lap
I’m afraid it’s my mother
The protocol is never to mention her
While we are fucking
II.
The bad conceit, the bad conceit police will arrest you
Twin compasses, twin compasses cannot come
Your father is not a car, not a compass and not God
Though he vanished in his sky-blue convertible Galaxy with a blonde
He kept crawling back to us, back to us
Each time with a fresh foot mangled
One emperor was named Lickety, the other named Split
Suddenly, the soup of chaos makes sense
Refugees roaming from tent to tent to tent, looking for love
The banknote is a half note, an octave above God
O the great conjugator of curses: shit, shat, have shut!
I have loved you both bowl-cut and shagged
There are days when the sun is a great gash
Nights, the moon smokes hashish and falls asleep on your lap
Sorry, but your morphing was not satisfactory
Shapeshifter, you choked on your magic scarf
III.
I heard this joke at the bar
An agnostic dyslexic insomniac stayed up all night searching for doG
The prosperity sign flips right side up again
The Almanac says this Ox Year we’ll toil like good immigrants
Horse is frigid. Mule can’t love
Salmon dead at the redd
One leg is stationary, the other must tread, must tread, must tread
The Triads riddled him, then us
What is the heart’s past participle?
She would have loved not to have loved
I bought you at the corner of Agave and Revolucíon
You wrapped yourself thrice around my green arm and shat!
A childless woman can feel the end of all existence
Look, on that bloody spot, Chrysanthemum!
Shamanka, fetch your grandmother at the bus stop
Changeling, you are the one I love
Tonight while the Stars Are Shimmering
(New World Duet)
A burst of red hibiscus on the hill
A dahlia-blue silence chills the path
Compassion falters on highway 8
Between La Jolla and Julian you are sad
Across the Del Mar shores I ponder my dead mother
Between heaven and earth, a pesky brown gull
The sky is green where it meets the ocean
You’re the master of
subterfuge, my love
A plume of foul orange from a duster plane
I wonder what poison he is releasing, you say
A steep wall of wildflowers, perhaps verbena
Purple so bright they mock the robes of God
In Feudal China you would’ve been drowned at birth
In India charred for a better dowry
How was I saved on that boat of freedom
To be anointed here on the prayer mat of your love?
High humidity, humiliation on the terrain
Oi, you can’t describe the ocean to the well frog
I call you racist, you call me racist
Now, we’re entering forbidden territory
I call you sexist, you call me a fool
And compare the canyons to breasts, anyway
I pull your hair, you bite my nape
We make mad love until birdsong morning
You tear off your shirt, you cry out to the moon
In the avocado grove you find peaches
You curse on the precipice, I weep near the sea
The Tribune says NOBODY WILL MARRY YOU
YOU’RE ALREADY FORTY
My mother followed a cockcrow, my granny a dog
Their palms arranged my destiny
Look, there’s Orion, look, the Dog Star
Sorry, your majesty, your poetry has lost its duende
Look, baby, baby, stop the car
A mouse and a kitty hawk, they are dancing
Yellow-mauve marguerites close their faces at dusk
Behind the iron gate, a jasmine breeze
In life we share a pink quilt, in death a blue vault
Shall we cease this redress, this wasteful ransom?
Your coffee is bitter, your spaghetti is sad