READING KEROUAC

I’m reading Kerouac to understand Luke. He’s cooking shrimp to understand me. In my imagination, Luke is Kerouac as a boy—he flies down a field, hooks a football on an orange fall night.

“Are you hungry?” Luke calls as he spins the shrimp in butter and garlic in a cottage in Rye. I wander the streets in Lowell with a boy in love. First my name is Maggie. Then I am a Cambodian girl, and we squat on the floor of a triple decker, spooning rice and shrimp in our mouths, and the moon is full.

When he talks to someone I don’t know on the phone, Luke is Kerouac in war. He falls into a voice I don’t know.

I imagine him as a soldier in the movies, crouched outside a door, gun ready, his eye to the gun sight. Or he is giving chocolate to kids. Dozens of arms are reaching up to him to get the chocolate. Anyone could have a grenade; anyone can be the enemy.