One child has brown eyes, one has blue
One slanted, another rounded
One so nearsighted he squints internal
One had her extra epicanthic folds removed
One downcast, one couldn’t be bothered
One roams the heavens for a perfect answer
One transfixed like a dead doe, a convex mirror
One shines double-edged like a poisoned dagger
Understand their vision, understand their blindness
Understand their vacuity, understand their mirth
(for Gwendolyn Brooks)
The brown boy hits me, but says he is sorry. The brown girl, his sister, says it’s because he likes me. I say, yuk! He likes me? Well, I hate him. The black girl pinches me and says, Scaredy-cat, tattletale, little pussy, I dare you to hit back. The white girl grabs my Hello Kitty purse and spills my milk money. I karate-chop her arm. The white boy says, My father says that your father’s egg rolls are made of fried rat penises. I answer, Yep, my father says that the reason why his egg rolls are made of fried rat penises is because Americans are weirdos and like to eat fried rat penises. The black girl laughs deep from her gut and high-fives me. Just as I am redrawing the map, my little fresh-off-the-boat cousin from Malaysia starts weeping into her pink shawl like a baby, wa wa wa. The white girl muffles her ears, Can’t you shut her up?
I say, Don’t cry, little cousin, it’s not as bad as it seems. It’s verse! I point to the window and magically, to entertain us, two fat pigeons appear cooing on the sill. The boy is sitting on top of the girl, trying to molest her. She is wobbling, shuffling, pirouetting under his weight. He is pecking a red, bald spot on her skinny neck and singing:
We real cooooool we real fooooools . . .
We real cooooool we real fooooools . . .
Finally, we all laugh as one, laughing and laughing at God’s beloved creatures. Behind this spectacle, against all odds, from the west, a strong explosion of sun bullies through the big-gray-loogie-of-a-cloud.
for Adrienne Rich
Tamra’s bawling into her burka: she misses her mother
Paulie’s growling into his cowl
Oh, stuff it, says Nellie, it’s not cool
Misha’s sniffling into his yashmak, meanwhile, yakety-yak
German’s chewing on his chiton
Ritta blows her nose into her babushka
Says, “You have problems with that?”
Homi’s unraveling his dhoti
Stephanie’s wheezing into her chemise
Gozo’s slouching in his happi coat
Fong just soiled her sarong, tries to get to the bathroom
But the line’s too long
Danny tears up his Yankee jersey, says
“I hate you all, I wanna go home!”
The Great Matriarch says
“Snot-nosed little terrorists! I know what you’ve done
You are all guilty!”
My grandpa was eighty my grandma was twenty
She cried for years for the good life she was missing
She faced the wall until he finished his dying
Then she polished his bones for all of eternity
Such entitlement my prickly little prince
Waving a pistol and a crumpled Ben Franklin
Don’t you know I’m a citizen of my own bed?
I paid for my passage I owe you nothing
Throw my girl into the river she won’t drown
Like her mother before her and her mother’s mother
Stubborn reed hollow at both ends
She’ll whistle and hum and float into dawn
The man from Worcester wants to eat my sister
He bends her backward coats her in rice flour
Pinches her corners calls her “sweet dumpling”
Fries her in deep oil then serves her on porcelain
Who is the Buddha a shit-wiping gumstick
Who is the Buddha a painter’s triptych
Who is the Buddha he is naked utterly naked
Who is the Buddha a stele a herdboy a sweet nothing
When I saw his corpse I knew he was mine
A flash of kerosene epaulets cheap aftershave
His flesh burnt black his mouth agape
Silently shouting another woman’s name
How sweet someone else’s husband
Lurking around the girls’ gymnasium
How sweet someone else’s student
Tanned and arrogant reciting bad poems
A flower and yet not a flower
A dream and yet not a dream
At midnight he comes to my bed
At daylight he returns to the dead
Hold on to your boy soldier on the moonlit path
I am an urban cougar on the sunset prowl
Once I take his nape in my bloody mouth
He’ll beg and moan and succumb to God
His loveroot dangling before a crimson sac
His tresses long disheveled and raven black
My warrior my warrior mounting a tall horse
My thighbird is calling she wants you back
My cousin calls him Allah my sister calls him Jesus
My brother calls him Krishna my mother calls him Gautama
I call him call him on his cell phone
But he does not answer
I climb the Acropolis swim in the Aegean
Flirt with Kouros but don’t give him my name
Drink tea at high noon eat octopus at dusk
A woman at forty is proud of her lust
She mounted a proud white steed
A proud white steed mounted she
Of late she preferred a dapple-gray, a roan, a sorrel, a motley bay
And a randy war pony was he
Hell no Dude-bro! You think you own this poetry
I see your lips trembling counting syllables
Cry epiphany long before the penultimate turn
A dry cough and a verse smears the ceiling
Pretty poem pretty poem pretty poem
A nosegay of poesies
Pretty boy pretty boy supine and lazy
Die a third time we’ll pen you an elegy
What they say about a woman at forty-five
Too late to live too soon to die
My wine is bittersweet my song is wry
My yoni still tight my puma is on fire
Ugly wives and bitchy concubines
they are one and the same
The blacker the black coffee the more I want two cups
All I get in Beijing is shit Nescafé sugary muck
Beauty / ugliness selfsame skyline obscured by smog
Imperial killjoy drunk on his back can’t get it up
I love socialist architecture! flabby husbands alcoholic hard bucks
The sadder they get the more I love them I can’t get enough
You could be a rich corpse or a poor corpse
Stuff all your cavities with jade and river pearls powdery gold snuff
The robbers will pluck them like fragrant florets
Silly boy eyes closed puckered you wait for love
Gripe about how life has cheated you of fame of riches
End of a violent century you are nostalgic for blood
My dear we are staring at the void at the edge of Americanness
The begonia is too beautiful we must love and be loved
The prince speaks
Let me lower the curtains, my love
Our last night together is brief
Let me straighten our wedding quilt
And warm it for you, my love
Let me fold your nightgown, my love
Let me unfasten your hair
Let me lift the veil from your face
To see my bride’s last cry
Heaven is our starry canopy, my love
Earth is our eternal bed
Let us drift in our cold black railroad car
And wake to empire again
One day in court, my Great-Great-Uncle Wu the bailiff broke wind. Lord Yuan said, “Who has shown contempt? Bring the perpetrator before me!” His subjects all laughed, some rattled their irons, some squealed in their cangues. Wu said, “I’m sorry, sire, the culprit has fled. I saw the long tail of his gilded robe fly through the eastern gate. But, I shall corner him in the royal stables, he shall meet his fate.”
So, Uncle Wu went to the stables and found a fresh turd, wrapped it in vermilion silk, stamped it with a paraffin seal and displayed it on a jade plate. “Your Honor, I am afraid that the culprit has escaped, but I have managed to collect one of his relatives.” And for this piece of too-late-in-the-empire buffoonery, Lord Yuan pulled out his sword from its ornate scabbard and lopped off Wu’s head.
From a Notebook of an Ex-Revolutionary
I pierced my nose once and bled
It scummed and scabbed and bled
I pierced a new hole and bled
It scummed and scabbed and bled
The infection refused to give
It scummed and scabbed and bled
White picket fence
A red chicken
Ain’t my people’s imagism
The urinal is perfect
NOT!
I dreamt that I was naked save a pair of designer stilettos and was ruthlessly networking at a benefit soiree. Suddenly, I was catapulted into the midst of strangling this famous court poet. I tried to deflect my scandalous action by arguing with the freckled-faced bartender. “What kind of a Virgin Mary is this: where is the Tabasco? Whence the celery stick?” I watched the world shrink into a penlight: how frail the court poet’s neck, how small this poetry world. Meanwhile, an ex-student, an up-and-coming famous court poet, upchucked on my shoes! I shouted, “Goddamn, not on my brand-new faux Pradas. If you’re going to genuflect, do it before the porcelain Madonna!” To soothe myself, I sang a short ditty: Poor little rice-girl, little rice-girl. Surely, the hem of privilege is soaked with crud.
Auntie Wu said to Michelangelo Wong, “How can you paint the Buddha so goodly and beget so foul of children?”
Michelangelo Wong replied, “I paint the temple in daylight and make my children in the dark.”
(HARD LABOR)
Jon Yi was born in the caves of Yenan,
Did the Long March on his mother’s breast.
He grew up and became a Red Guard,
Placed a dunce cap on the very same mother,
Marched her to Xinjiang, to die of hard labor.
Twenty years later in Sonoma California
He confessed to his loving wife—I’m a weakling.
A spineless scoundrel, a turtle’s spawn.
A lackey, a whelp-dog. He squealed and squealed,
History made me do it! History made me do it!
(DUELING QUATRAINS)
Sylvia
You baked me a cake and it’s not even my birthday
I ate a slice politely though it’s wormy and stale
How thin you are dear Sylvia how terribly thin
You must be suffering from poetry
Emily
Eternity suits you Emily new rouge on your cheeks
Entertainment Today wants to interview you
How Mr. So and So Higginson spurned your love
How Mr. So and So Johnson mended your bones
The ash fell all day today
Fell all day yesterday
Will fall all day tomorrow
From Dachau to Buchenwald
From the Pripyat River
To the Kiev Reservoir
From the Fukushima shores
To the T
dai-ji temple
One bonsh bell
Cries out to
Another
And a
lame ox
Goes
vir
al
If a black man could be president
Could a white man be his slave?
Could a sinner enter heaven
By uttering his name?
If the terminator is my governor
Could a cowboy be my king?
When shall the cavalry enter Deadwood
And save my prince?
An exo-cannibal eats her enemies
An indo-cannibal eats her friends
I’d rather starve myself silly
Than to make amends
Blood on the altar Blood on the lamb
Blood in the chalice
Not symbolic but fresh