Chino

The olla knocked with steam. The masa cooked. She said her eyes are china. The vowel switched on an aura, a shine that sheens the threshold. The vowel was spell: an i that might we, an i that echoes how we’re seen and see. Eye dentity. Ay Dios, she exclaimed surrounded by photos — niños and nietos — where I’m the only chino. How might I see through my family’s eyes — an owl’s eyes in ojos and one in its lid turned sideways 目 — I wondered with her at the table where we placed one olive — ojo negro — in each hoja, that worn folio for field corn’s field notes. What does that dark eye in the ear’s husk see?