Rhapsody in Plain Yellow

by Marilyn Chin

  Say: reverence to her, reverence to her.

  Say: I am a very small boy, a very small boy,

  I am a teeny weeny little boy

  who yearns to be punished.

  Say, I can’t live without you

  Head Mistress, Head Mistress,

  I am a little lamb, a consenting little lamb,

  I am a sheep without his fold.

  Say: God does not exist and hell is other people—

  and Mabel, can’t we get out of this hotel?

  Say: Gregor Samsa—someone in Tuscaloosa

  thinks you’re magnifico, she will kiss

  your battered cheek, embrace your broken skull.

  Is the apple half eaten or half whole?

  Suddenly, he moves within me, how do I know

  that he is not death, in death there is

  certain // caesura.

  Say: there is poetry in his body, poetry

  in his body, yes, say:

  this dead love, this dead love,

  this dead, dead love, this lovely death,

  this white percale, white of hell, of heavenly shale.

  Centerfolia . . . say: kiss her sweet lips.

  Say: what rhymes with “flower”:

  “bower,” “shower,” “power”?

  I am that yellow girl, that famished yellow girl

  from the first world.

  Say: I don’t give a shit about nothing

  ’xcept my cat, your cock and poetry.

  Say: a refuge between sleeping and dying.

  Say: to Maui to Maui to Maui

  creeps in his petty pompadour.

  Day to day, her milk of human kindness

  ran dry; I shall die of jejune jejune la lune la lune.

  Say: a beleaguered soldier, a fine arse had he.

  Say: I have seen the small men of my generation

  rabid, discrete, hysterical, lilliput, naked.

  Say: Friday is okay; we’ll have fish.

  Say: Friday is not okay; he shall die

  of the measles near the bay.

  Say: Friday, just another savage

  day until Saturday, the true Sabbath, when they shall

  finally stay.Say:

  Sojourner

  Truth.

  Say: I am dismayed by your cloying promiscuousness

  and fawning attitude.

  Say: amaduofu, amaduofu.

  Say: he put cumin and tarragon in his stew.

  Say: he’s the last wave of French Algerian Jews.

  He’s a cousin of Helene Cixous, twice removed.

  Say: he recites the lost autobiography of Camus.

  Say: I am a professor from the University of Stupidity,

  I cashed my welfare check and felt good.

  I saw your mama crossing the bridge of magpies

  up on the faded hillock with the Lame Ox—

  Your father was conspicuously absent.

  Admit that you loved your mother,

  that you killed your father to marry your mother.

  Suddenly, my terrible childhood made sense.

  Say: beauty and truth, beauty and truth,

  all ye need to know on earth all ye need to know.

  Say: I was boogying down, boogying down

  Victoria Peak Way and a slip-of-a-boy climbed off his ox;

  he importuned me for a kiss, a tiny one

  on his cankered lip.

  Say: O celebrator O celebrant

  of a blessed life, say:

  false fleeting hopes

  Say: despair, despair, despair.

  Say: Chinawoman, I am a contradiction in terms:

  I embody frugality and ecstasy.

  Friday Wong died on a Tuesday,

  O how he loved his lambs.

  He was lost in their sheepfold.

  Say: another mai tai before your death.

  Another measure another murmur before your last breath.

  Another boyfriend, Italianesque.

  Say: Save. Exit.

  Say: I am the sentence which shall at last elude her.

  Oh, the hell of heaven’s girth, a low mound from here . . .

  Say:

  Oh, a mother’s vision of the emerald hills draws down her brows.

  Say: A brush of jade, a jasper plow furrow.

  Say: ####00000xxxxx!!!!

  Contemplate thangs cerebral spiritual open stuff reality

  by definition lack any spatial extension

  we occupy no space and are not measurable

  we do not move undulate are not in perpetual motion

  where for example is thinking in the head? in my vulva?

  whereas in my female lack of penis? Physical

  thangs spatial extensions mathematically measurable

  preternaturally possible lack bestial vegetable consciousness

  lack happiness lackluster lack chutzpah lack love

  Say: A scentless camellia bush bloodied the afternoon.

  Fuck this line, can you really believe this?

  When did I become the master of suburban bliss?

  With whose tongue were we born?

  The language of the masters is the language of the aggressors.

  We’ve studied their cadence carefully—

  enrolled in a class to improve our accent.

  Meanwhile, they hover over, waiting for us to stumble . . .

  to drop an article, mispronounce an R.

  Say: softly, softly, the silent gunboats glide.

  O onerous sibilants, O onomatopoetic glibness.

  Say:

  How could we write poetry in a time like this?

  A discipline that makes much ado about so little?

  Willfully laconic, deceptively disguised as a love poem.

  Say:

  Your engorging dict-

  atorial flesh

  grazed mine.

  Would you have loved me more if I were black?

  Would I have loved you more if you were white?

  And you, relentless Sinophile,

  holding my long hair, my frayed dreams.

  My turn to objectify you.

  I, the lunatic, the lover, the poet,

  the face of an orphan static with flies,

  the scourge of the old world,

  which reminds us—it ain’t all randy dandy

  in the new kingdom.

  Say rebuke descry

  Hills and canyons, robbed by sun, leave us nothing.

  Notes

  That Half Is Almost Gone

  “That half is almost gone” is a visual play on the Chinese character for “love”: .

  The semantic radical for this character is the character for “heart.”

  A slash goes straight across the “heart.”

  “ai, ai” is an exclamation homophonous with ai/love, punning love with pain.

  The Colonial Language Is English

  “The Tao of which we speak is not the eternal Tao

  The name that we utter is not the eternal name”

  comes from Lao Tzu.

  Take a Left at the Waters of Samsara

  Samsara: Hindu continous cycle of birth, death and rebirth. This chain of eternal suffering is a result of karma, accumulated debts from evil and sinful actions.

  Chinese Quatrains

  Adapted from jue-ju, literally “cut verse,” four-lined poems, usually seven characters per line.

  Cauldron

  The poem is shaped like a myriad of bronze, three-legged ceremonial cauldrons (ding) one piled on top of another. The final shape should look like one large, abstracted cauldron.

  Hong Kong Fathersong

  Furama Hotel: an old colonial hotel.

  Happy Valley: a racetrack in Hong Kong.

  Cat Street: red-light district.

  Wanchai: a bustling district in Hong Kong.

  Get Rid of the X

  The poem is an allusion to a famous lyric by Lipo called “Drinking with the Moon.”

  How Deep Is the River of
God?

  “Guan, guan cry the ospreys” is an allusion from the Shih Ching, an anthology of ancient folk poetry written between 800–600 B.C.

  Variations on an Ancient Theme: The Drunken Husband

  The dog barking is a conventional opening in many folk songs. The drunken husband is also a conventional character. In this instance, I am alluding to poems in the Yueh Fu.

  Bold Beauty

  Ts’ai Yen (A.D. 200) was a daughter of an important official in the later Han Dynasty. During the Tartar invasion, she was captured and served as wife to the Tartar chief for twelve years. She was finally ransomed and returned to her family. However, her sons were left behind.

  The True Story of Mortar and Pestle

  The story is derived from a Chinese ghost story in the classical collection Yuan Hun Chih (A.D. 550).

  Where We Live Now

  “Red Detachment of Women” was a Maoist dance drama popular during the cultural revolution.

  Tonight while the Stars Are Shimmering

  “Between heaven and earth, a pesky brown gull” comes from Tu Fu.

  “prayer mat” refers to a classic pornographic novel The Prayermat of Flesh.

  Family Restaurant (#1)

  Inspired by a Wang Wei poem.

  Family Restaurant (#2)

  “Fan loy, fan loy” Cantonese meaning “come back, come back.”

  Folk Song Revisited

  “Her Door Opens to White Waters” is a folk song in the Yueh Fu.

  Ohio/Ohio

  “Ohio” puns with a Japanese greeting.

  Kanji: Chinese classical characters absorbed into the Japanese language.

  “The tenth stroke . . .” Please refer to the explanation for the character for “love” in the note to “That Half Is Almost Gone” on p. 105.

  Identity Poem (#99)

  Poidog: American Hawaiian slang for a mongrel, a mixed-race person.

  Summer Sonatina

  “Kingdoms come, kingdoms go, but family is forever” comes from Confucious.

  Rhapsody in Plain Yellow

  “Rhapsody” mocks the fu form, characterized by long, poetic exposition.

  An Lu Shan: a famous rebel warrior in the T’ang Dynasty who tried to topple the kingdom.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the Corporation of Yaddo, the Blue Mountain Center, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan and San Diego State University for their support. I would also like to thank the editors at the following publications, where the poems first appeared:

  The American Voice “Hospital in Oregon”

  Brilliant Corners “Emilies,” “Hospital Interlude”

  Field “Family Restaurant,” “Blues on Yellow (#2)”

  The Iowa Review “Get Rid of the X,” “Summer Sonatina,” “How Deep Is the River of God?” “I Am Waiting,” “Libations,” “Song of the Giant Calabash,” “Variations on an Ancient Theme”

  The Kenyon Review “The Colonial Language Is English,” “Cauldron”

  Luna “Identity Poem #99”

  The Paris Review “The True Story of Mortar and Pestle”

  Parnassus “Horse Horse Hyphen Hyphen,” “Tonight while the Stars Are Shimmering”

  The Progressive “Blues on Yellow,” “Hong Kong Fathersong,” “Millennium, Six Songs,” “So, You Fucked John Donne”

  The Seattle Review “To Pursue the Limitless”

  Shenandoah “Rhapsody in Plain Yellow”

  Solo “That Half Is Almost Gone”

  Washington Square “Horseyear”

  ANTHOLOGIES

  “The True Story of Mr. and Mrs. Wong,” Microfiction, edited by Jerome Stern, W. W. Norton, 1996

  “Cauldron,” The Best American Poetry, 1996, edited by Adrienne Rich, Scribner, 1997

  “That Half Is Almost Gone,” Pushcart Prize Anthology, l998

  “Rhapsody in Plain Yellow,” Screaming Monkeys, an anthology of Asian American Literature, edited by M. Galang, Coffee House Press, 2001

  “Millennium, Six Songs,” Powerlines, edited by Michael Warr, Tuchia Press, 1999

  ALSO BY MARILYN CHIN

  Dwarf Bamboo

  The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty

  Copyright © 2002 by Marilyn Chin

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  “Love Song” by William Carlos Williams, from Collected Poems: 1909–1939, Volume 1, copyright by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  The text of this book is composed in Centaur

  Composition by Tom Ernst

  Book design by Chris Welch

  Production manager: Andrew Marasia

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Chin, Marilyn.

  Rhapsody in plain yellow / by Marilyn Chin.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-393-04167-0

  1. Chinese American families—Poetry. 2. Mothers and daughters—Poetry.

  3. Chinese Americans—Poetry. 4. Grandmothers—Poetry. I. Title.

  PS3553.H48975 R48 2002

  811'.54—dc21

  2001044211

  ISBN 978-0-393-63486-0 (e-book)

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

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