Jane Wong

I am the type to go to bed with my feet dirty A man calling from a balcony is not to be trusted In 1988, the nation sings a song I can’t understand but I sing it 
because everyone looks at me like a thief and no one likes a thief Algae gather in plastic cups along the Jersey Shore The dull prongs of a fork still count as a weapon I gather plastic cups along the shore and shake them out to use for tea, juice, a home for my toothbrush The pledge of allegiance is a building ledge, an alleged crime, a leg crossed over another leg, a plea gone askew, a glance shared in a room with someone else who looks like you Hundreds of toxic wild boars are roaming across northern Japan and it would be a mistake to identify with them In 1960, my grandmother holds no knife in no tall wheat When washing her feet, my grandmother tells me she spent decades without shoes, wonders if the mud misses her When we look at each other, we also look away, knowingly I am a good daughter and I can repeat this indefinitely without 
taking a breath Often, I call out to myself just to hear an echo, to hear something moving in the walls like a healthy family of rats My mother has been told, repeatedly: “You cannot walk here” Here is a white stone, a white fence, a white seagull, a white jug of milk, a white candle, a white duvet, a white patio, a white bar of soap to wash your mouth out Sometimes I dream in Cantonese and I have no idea what is being said You grow to love what you create, pouring out of your mouth In 1988, my father sees his reflection in the rearview mirror and identifies with the blood moon lighting his way to Atlantic City From a balcony, a man yells at me: “You need some white dick” and I turn into a boar 我 在 广 东 做 梦 My father disappears for weeks and my mother keeps weeding the garden, pulling cigarettes from the splintering tomatoes I will devour I study asymptotes for months and dream in curves — almost but never touching My mother writes in her English diary for night school: “I hate him I hate him I hate him I hate him I” and her ESL teacher only gives her a check, so I give her a check plus To be a good daughter means to carry everything with you at all times, the luggage of the past lifted to the mouth When we look at each other, my mother laughs like an overripe tomato on a windowsill In 1989, I spent months assembling a puzzle map of the United States of America and the teacher said, “Good job, Jane” and then louder and slower like a drowning sloth: “Gooooood jooooob, Jane” and I did not touch a single piece Bloody drunk and a blood moon, my father fights with another gambler and jabs at his arm with a dull fork and they both laugh celestially 你 是 一 只 美 丽 的 野 猪 During elementary school, I did not say a single word, not even when called on, and thus the teachers and administrators 
decided I could not speak English because they looked at me Mao Zedong explains math: “In geometry, I just drew a picture of an egg — that was enough geometry for me” My grandfather was jailed by the Red Army sometime between 1966 and 1976 and my mother says: “I saw him cry when I tried to visit. He wanted to eat the bao I made for him” Algae gather, gleaming like jewels, on the head of my 5th grade betta fish Counterrevolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution are likened to “finding a bone inside an egg” I was born, healthy, in the year of the rat The man on the balcony invests in a foldable set of two chairs and one table in eggshell white — mold resistant, perfect for outdoor use 你 不 敢 看 我 I was ten when I willed a rock to fall off a ledge, just by staring at it long enough

How hard it is to sleep in the middle of a life. — Audre Lorde We wake in the middle of a life,                    hungry. We smear durian            along our mouths, sing soft death a lullaby. Carcass breath, eros of  licked fingers and the finest perfume. What is love if  not         rot? We wear the fruit’s hull as a spiked crown, grinning in green armor.   Death to the grub, fat in his milky shuffle! Death to the lawlessness       of dirt! Death to mud and its false chocolate!   To the bloated sun we want to slice open and yolk                      all over the village. We want a sun-drenched           slug feast, an omelet loosening its folds like hot Jell-O. We want the marbled fat of steak and all        its swirling pink galaxies. We want the drool, the gnash, the pluck of each corn kernel, raw and summer                   swell. Tears welling up                     oil. Order up! Pickled cucumbers piled like logs for a fire, like fat limbs we pepper and succulent                in. Order up: shrimp chips curling in a porcelain bowl like subway seats. Grapes peeled from bitter bark — almost translucent, like eyes we would rather see. Little girl, what do you leave, leaven              in your sight? Death to the open eyes of  the dying. Here,           there are so many open eyes we can’t close each one.          No, we did not say the steamed eye of a fish. No eyelids fluttering like no butterfly wings. No purple yam lips. We said eyes. Still and resolute as a heartbreaker.         Does this break your heart?                                      Look, we don’t want to be rude, but seconds, please. Want: globes of oranges swallowed whole like a basketball or Mars or whatever planet is the most delicious.                   Slather Saturn! Ferment Mercury! Lap up its film of dust, yuk sung! Seconds, thirds, fourths! Meat wool! A bouquet of chicken feet! A garden of                   melons, monstrous in their bulge!               Prune back nothing. We purr in this garden. We comb through berries and come out so blue. Little girl,                            lasso tofu, the rope slicing its belly clean. Deep fry a cloud so it tastes like bitter gourd or your father leaving — the exhaust of his car, charred. Serenade a snake and slither its tongue into yours and                           bite. Love! What is love if  not knotted in garlic? Child, we move through graves like eels, delicious         with our heads first, our mouths agape. Our teeth:         little needles to stitch a factory of everything made in China.      You ask: Are you hungry? Hunger eats through the air like ozone. You ask: What does it mean to be rootless? Roots are good to use as toothpicks. You: How can you wake in the middle of a life? We shut and open our eyes like the sun shining on tossed pennies in a forgotten well. Bald copper, blood. Yu choy bolts                  into roses down here. While you were sleeping, we woke to the old leaves of  your backyard shed and ate that and one of your lost flip-flops too. In a future life, we saw rats overtake a supermarket with so much milk, we turned opaque. We wake to something boiling. We wake to wash dirt from lettuce, to blossom into your face. Aphids along the lashes. Little girl, don’t forget              to take care of  the chickens, squawking in their mess and stench. Did our mouths buckle                                at the sight of  you devouring slice                after slice of  pizza and the greasy box too? Does this frontier swoon for you? It’s time to wake up. Wake the tapeworm who loves his home. Wake the ants,                  let them do-si-do a spoonful of  peanut butter. Tell us, little girl, are you hungry, awake,                               astonished enough?