A Threnody
—in which a white person asks me, “Where are you from?”
The edge of colonial imagination. The burnt ash beneath the family tree. The Orient, the Middle Kingdom, wooden ships burning in the Yangtze. In Nanning all that I am is a column of unbroken ice. A carcass, already dying on the hospital steps. Let me shatter like precious crystal, a thousand shards of porcelain, hold them to the light. See how they glitter, my body a cracked vessel, cobalt oxide set afire in the kiln.
—in which a white person asks me, “Where are you really from?”
Smiling blonde women in red and white. My mother, hair in curlers: “Let’s drive to Omaha this weekend.” Barbecues, corn on the cob seared to ecstasy. My reflection monstrous, repulsive, as was predestined. I am the impostor, the leftovers at Thanksgiving. Toss me away, wheat from chaff. Discard the innards.
IN THE ABSENCE OF MUSIC THERE IS ONLY SILENCE
IN THE ABSENCE OF TEXT THERE IS ONLY EMPTY SPACE
IN ANCIENT GREEK THE VERB TO BEWAIL IS γοήμεναι
BELOW, PLEASE DETAIL
THE PRACTICE OF MOURNING IN HOMER
I have written for you:
IN THE FIELD MY COUSIN HAS SHOT A DOE
SHE IS DYING
HE SLASHES MY THROAT
BLOOD WOVEN INTO THE LOOM OF GRASS
The Exile’s Second Letter
—after Ezra Pound
Dearest mother, your daughter writes to you,
Flung far from that place of southern tranquility
Where last we parted with great sorrow.
I remember nothing of it, being newly-born,
Sleeping silently on those steps.
You had to be off, so far you might have traveled,
Perhaps from an entire town over.
In those days, that was a long way.
I worry about you, braving the springtime
That ravages us with illness.
Would that I could send you rice reaped by another,
The small pleasures of my life abroad.
I go out only rarely into the courtyard or the street,
And when I go out I hide my face.
People look through me like I am from somewhere else.
I think of you often, my parents and siblings,
Though you are nameless to me,
More nameless than the many dead.
I will not send this across an ocean.
Instead I will refrain from thinking of you,
Until autumn arrives in the southernmost province,
Where I once waited for you, as I have waited all my life,
Knowing that you would never return.
