Marilyn Chin

❖ A hundred red fire ants scouring, scouring the white peony ❖ Fallen plum blossoms return to the branch, you sleep, then harden again ❖ Cuttlefish in my palm stiffens with rigor mortis, boy toys can't love ❖ Neighbor's barn: grass mat, crickets, Blue Boy, trowel handle, dress soaked in mud ❖ Iron-headed mace; double-studded halberd slice into emptiness ❖ O fierce Oghuz, tie me to two wild elephants, tear me in half ❖ O my swarthy herder, two-humped bactrian, drive me the long distance ❖ Forceps, tongs,bushi, whip, flanks, scabbard, stirrup, goads, distaff, wither, awl ❖ Black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne's lace, bounty of cyclamen, mown paths erupt ❖ Gaze at the charred hills, the woebegone kiosks, we are all God's hussies ❖ I have not fondled the emperor's lapdog, whose name is Black Muzzle ❖ Urge your horses into the mist-swilled Galilee, O sweet Bedlamite ❖ Her Majesty's randying up the jewel stairs to find the pleasure dome ❖ Ancient pond; the frog jumps in and in and in: the deep slap of water ❖ The frog jumps into the ancient pond; she says, no, I am not ready ❖ Coyote cooked his dead wife's vagina and fed it to his new wife ❖ I plucked out three white pubic hairs and they turned into flying monkeys ❖ Let's do it on the antimacassar, on the antimacassar ❖ Little Red drew her teeny pistol from her basket and said "eat me" ❖ Chimera: Madame Pol Pot grafting a date tree onto a date tree ❖ His unworthy appendage, his mutinous henchman grazed my pink cheeks ❖ He on top now changes to bottom, Goddess welcomes her devotee ❖ Fish fish fowl fowl, mock me Mistress Bean Curd, I am both duck and essence ❖ Don't touch him, bitch, we're engaged; and besides, he's wearing my nipple ring ❖ Sing sing little yellow blight rage rage against the dying of the light

for my love, Charles (1938-2000) Say: 言 I love you, I love you, I love you, no matter your race, your sex, your color. Say: the world is round and the arctic is cold. Say: I shall kiss the rondure of your soul’s living marl. Say: he is beautiful, serenely beautiful, yet, only ephemerally so. Say: Her Majesty combs her long black hair for hours. Say: O rainbows, in his eyes, rainbows. Say: O frills and fronds, I know you Mr. Snail Consciousness, O foot plodding the underside of leaves. Say: I am nothing without you, nothing, Ms. Lookeast, Ms. Lookeast, without you, I am utterly empty. Say: the small throat of sorrow. Say: China and France, China and France. Say: Beauty and loss, the dross of centuries. Say: Nothing in their feudal antechamber shall relinquish us of our beauty— Say: Mimosa—this is not a marriage song (epithalamion). Say: when I was a young girl in Hong Kong a prince came on a horse, I believe it was piebald. O dead prince     dead dead prince     who paid for my ardor. Say: O foot     O ague     O warbling oratorio . . . Say: Darling, use “love” only as a transitive verb for the first forty years of your life. Say: I have felt this before, it’s soft, human. Say: my love is a fragile concertina. Say: you always love them in the beginning, then, you take them to slaughter. O her coarse whispers     O her soft bangs. By their withers, they are emblazoned doppelgangers. Say: beauty and terror, beauty and terror. Say: the house is filled with perfume, dancing sonatinas and pungent flowers. Say: houses filled with combs     combs     combs and the mistress’ wan ankles. Say: embrace the An Lu Shan ascendancy and the fantastical diaspora of tears. Say: down blue margins my inky love runs. Tearfully, tearfully, the pearl concubine runs. There is a tear in his left eye—sadness or debris? 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 jujune 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.

I. Black swollen fruit dangling on a limb Red forgotten flesh sprayed across the prairie Parched brown vines creeping over the wall Yellow winged pollen, invisible enemies Boluses without homesteads, grubs without a voice Burrowed deeply into this land’s dark, dark heart Someday, our pods and pupae shall turn in the earth And burgeon into our motherlode’s bold beauty II. We’re a seed on the manure, on the sole of your shoe We’re the louse trapped in your hank of golden hair We’re the sliver that haunts beneath your thumbnail We the church mouse you scorched with a match but lived We’re the package wrapped, return address unknown We’re the arm lowered again, again, a bloodied reverie We’ve arrived shoeless, crutchless, tousle-haired, swollen-bellied We shall inherit this earth’s meek glory, as foretold II. (For Leah, my niece) They gave you a title, but you were too proud to wear it They gave you the paterland, but you were too lazy to farm it Your condo is leaking, but you’re too angry to repair it Your dress has moth holes, but you’re too sentimental to toss it You’re too bored to play the lute, it hangs on the wall like an ornament The piano bites you, it’s an eight-legged unfaithful dog Love grows in the garden, but you’re too impudent to tend it A nice Hakka boy from Ogden, so hardworking, so kind The prayer mat is for prayer, not for catamite nipple-piercing The Goddess wags her finger at your beautiful wasteland A dream deferred, well, is a dream deferred IV. (Janie’s retort, on her fortieth birthday) The same stars come around and around and around The same sun pecks her heat at the horizon The same housing tract, the same shopping center The same blunt haircut: Chinese, Parisian, Babylonion The same lipstick: red and it comes off on your coffeecup The same stars come around and around and around The same sun tarries in the late noon sky The same word for mom:Ah ma, madre, mere, majka The same birthbabe: bald, purplish, you slap to make cry The same stench: mother’s milk, shit and vomit The same argument between a man and a woman The same dog, hit by a car, the same escaped canary The same turkey for Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year The same three-tiered freeway: Istanbul, Tokyo, San Diego The same hill, the same shanty town, the same lean-to The same skyscraper: Hong Kong, Singapore, Toledo The same soup: chicken, though the veggies may vary The same rice for supper: white, brown or wild The same stars come around and around and around The same sun dips her head into the ocean The same tree in the same poem by the same poet The same old husband: saggy breasts, baggy thighs The same blackness whether we sleep or die V. Whoever abandoned her grandmother at the bus stop Whoever ran in and out the door like a blind wind spinning the upside-down prosperity sign right side up again Whoever lost her virtue    in darkly paneled rooms    with white boys Whoever prayed for round eyes and taped her eyelids in waiting Whoever wore platform shoes blustering taller than her own kind Whoever sold her yellow gold for Jehovah Whoever discarded her jade Buddha for Christ VI. Why are you proud, father, entombed with the other woman? Why are you proud, mother, knitting my shroud in heaven? Why are you proud, fish, you feed the greedy mourners? Why are you proud, peonies, your heads are bowed and weighty? Why are you proud, millennium, the dialect will die with you? Why are you proud, psalm, hammering yourself into light?

Little Box talks back With a new set of teeth And pink gums A fake nose and a wax mustache She disguises her voice To sound like Groucho • Little Box opens up And cries to her psychiatrist I don’t know why they hate me I’m such a sweetheart I volunteer at the zoo And teach Mandarin To their bratty children

Your name is Diana Toy. And all you may have for breakfast is rice gruel. You can't spit it back into the cauldron for it would be unfilial. You can't ask for yam gruel for there is none. You can't hide it in the corner for it would surely be found, and then you would be served cold, stale rice gruel. This is the philosophy of your tong: you, the child, must learn to understand the universe through the port-of-entry, your mouth, to discern bitter from sweet, pungent from bland. You were told that the infant Buddha once devoured earth and spewed forth the wisdom of the ages. Meat or gruel, wine or ghee, even if it's gruel, even if it's nothing, that gruel, that nothingness will shine into the oil of your mother's scrap-iron wok, into the glare of your father's cleaver, and dance in your porcelain bowl. Remember, what they deny you won't hurt you. What they spare you, you must make shine, so shine, shine . . .

My shadow followed me to San Diego silently, she never complained. No green card, no identity pass, she is wedded to my fate. The moon is a drunk and anorectic, constantly reeling, changing weight. My shadow dances grotesquely, resentful she can't leave me. The moon mourns his unwritten novels, cries naked into the trees and fades. Tomorrow, he'll return to beat me blue—again, again and again. Goodbye Moon, goodbye Shadow. My husband, my lover, I'm late. The sun will plunge through the window. I must make my leap of faith.

For Don (1958–2011) My skiff is made of spicewood       my oars are Cassia bract Music flows      from bow to starboard Early Mozart     cool side of  Coltrane   and miles and miles     of   Miles Cheap Californian Merlot       and my young boyfriend • If   I could master      the nine doors of my body And close my heart       to the cries of   suffering Perhaps     I could love you like no other Float my mind      toward the other side of   hate • The shanty towns of   Tijuana       sing for you The slums of   Little Sudan       hold evening prayer One dead brown boy is a tragedy Ten thousand is a statistic So let’s fuck    my love       until the dogs pass • All beautiful boyfriends are transitory They have no souls     they’re shiny brown flesh Tomorrow they’ll turn into      purple festering corpses Fissured     gored    by a myriad flies • Down the Irrawaddy River       you lay yourself   to sleep No sun no moon          no coming no going No causality   no personality No hunger     no thirst • Malarial deltas      typhoidal cays Tsunamis don’t judge     Calamity grieves no one The poor will be submerged     the rich won’t be saved Purge the innocent     sink the depraved • What do I smell        but the perfume of   transience Crushed calyxes         rotting phloems Let’s write     pretty poems        pretty poems      pretty poems Masque stale pogroms    with a sweet whiff of oblivion

for Charles You have lived six decades     and you have lived none You have loved many     and you have loved no one You wedded three wives       but you lie in your cold bed alone You sired four children     but they cannot forgive you Knock at emptiness    a house without your love Strike the pine box     no answer    all hollow You planted plums near the gate     but they bear no fruit You raised herbs in the veranda     fresh and savory I cry for you     but no sound wells up in my throat I sing for you     but my tears have dried in my gullet Walk the old dog     give the budgies a cool bath Cut a tender melon     let it bleed into memory The robe you washed     hangs like a carcass flayed The mug you loved       is stained with old coffee Your toothbrush is silent        grease mums your comb Something's lost        something's made strong Around the corner    a new prince yearns to be loved A fresh turn of phrase       a bad strophe erased A random image       crafts itself into a poem A sleepless Taipei night       a mosquito's symphony Who will cry for you    me and your sister Colette Who will cry for you    me and your Algerian sister You were a rich man    but you held on to your poverty You were a poor man    who loved gold over dignity I sit near your body bag       and sing you a last song I sit near your body bag      and chant your final sutra What's our place on earth?     nada       nada       nada What's our destiny?       war     grief     maggots     nada Arms      cheeks    cock     femur    eyelids    nada Cowl     ox      lamb     vellum    marrow    nada Vulva      nada     semen    nada    ovum    nada Eternity     nada       heaven    nada    void    nada Birth and death the same blackened womb Birth and death the same white body bag Detach     detach we enter the world alone Detach     detach we leave the world bone lonely If we can't believe in god       we must believe in love We must believe in love       we must believe in love And they zip you up        in your white body bag White body bag        white    white     body       bag

The aeroplane is shaped like a bird Or a giant mechanical penis My father escorts my mother From girlhood to unhappiness A dragonfly has iridescent wings Shorn, it’s a lowly pismire Plucked of arms and legs A throbbing red pepperpod Baby, she’s a girl Pinkly propped as a doll Baby, she’s a pearl An ulcer in the oyster of God Cry little baby clam cry The steam has opened your eyes Your secret darkly hidden The razor is sharpening the knife Abandoned taro-leaf boat Its lonely black sail broken The corpses are fat and bejeweled The hull is thoroughly rotten The worm has entered the ear And out the nose of my father Cleaned the pelvis of my mother And ringed around her fingerbone One child beats a bedpan One beats a fishhook out of wire One beats his half sister on the head Oh, teach us to fish and love Don’t say her boudoir is too narrow She could sleep but in one cold bed Don’t say you own many horses We escaped on her skinny mare’s back Man is good said Meng-Tzu We must cultivate their natures Man is evil said Hsun-Tzu There’s a worm in the human heart He gleaned a beaded purse from Hong Kong He procured an oval fan from Taiwan She married him for a green card He abandoned her for a blonde My grandmother is calling her goslings My mother is summoning her hens The sun has vanished into the ocean The moon has drowned in the fen Discs of jade for her eyelids A lozenge of pearl for her throat Lapis and kudzu in her nostrils They will rob her again and again

Metaphor     metaphor     my pestilential aesthetic A tsunami powers through     my mother’s ruins Delta     delta     moist loins of the republic Succumb to the low-lying succubus     do! Flagpole     flagpole     my father’s polemics A bouquet of     fuck-u-bastard flowers Fist me     embrace me     with your phantom limbs Slay me     with your slumlord     panegyrics Flip over     so I can see your pastoral mounts Your sword     slightly parting     from the scabbard Girl skulls     piled like fresh-baked loaves A foul wind     scours my mother’s cadaver Ornamental     Oriental     techno     impresarios I am your parlor rug     your chamber bauble Love me     stone me     I am all yours Pound     Pound     my father’s Ezra Freedom     freedom     flageolet-tooting   girls Dancing     on the roof     of the maquiladoras