Year: 2014

Pops, and a series of loud bangs. The gas cap of a grey van is dark with soot and flapped open; where it’s parked, a little flame flickers at the base of an elm. The alley is veiled in smoke. A fire truck pulls up. Someone must have called. But whoever set off bottle rockets is gone. My mother-in-law says she saw three teenagers sprinting for the avenue. The fire is quickly doused. Hours after, the air has the unmistakable undertone of gunpowder. This is not something you necessarily smell in gunpowder tea, which is a form of green tea produced in certain provinces of China. Tea-pickers roll each leaf into small round pellets resembling ammunition. The harder and shinier they are when dried, the better flavor they impart when steeped briefly in hot, not boiling, water: not a lacerating bitterness, but a smoky mellow drift from leaves gathered just before sunrise, when the fog has not yet lifted from the ground.

In dreams, conflagrations
make me seek the cooler side
of cotton pillows.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Dreamtime.

The phone rings. The caller, a woman, says in a frantic voice: “I cain’t find the fried chicken. I cain’t find the fried chicken.” In the background are car horns, indistinguishable voices. “Wrong number,” I say. She doesn’t hear above the noise. I have to repeat: “Wrong number.” A while later the phone rings again. I forget to check the number, but I’m thinking it’s still the chicken lady, desperate for her dinner. I wonder if I should ask her why the chicken crossed the road. Or where. Or why not baked or rotisserie chicken. But it’s not the chicken lady; it’s my contractor with the bad attitude, responding to my query from a week ago about roof repair. Scratch that: more like, hectoring. I can hardly get a word in edgewise— “You oughta’ be grateful it’s only a leak. You know I’ve got xyz jobs in far worse shape than what you got, that need my immediate attention. I’m running all over the place. I really don’t have the time. I coulda’ told you when you bought that house that the roof was bad.” Yeah? Well I don’t need to be lectured, mister. Pulverize is a word that applies to a number of materials. Pressure pulls the wire to decrease the stitch. Goodbye, wrong number. I don’t think I’ll be doing business with you again.

Red bell tower with a cotton lining; one dark-suited crow for a clapper.

*

The night birds chant a song of virgules only. When I wake, the fields have throats lined with frogs’ mating songs.

*

In the shallows, what makes the cheeks of the lotus bulge?

*

I squinted up into the trees and saw the face of the Buddha pressed on each green globe dangling.

*

Dear tufted seed lying in the maw of thunder, I raise my cup to be blessed.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Farmer.

Food prep, dinner, dishes— whatever
my in-laws happen to be doing, they drop it

when their favorite Korean telenovela starts
on TV. They live in a two-floor brownstone shared

with cousins that arrived with them and settled
here in the heart of Immigrantville nearly four

decades ago. And, no matter what room they’re in,
they can hear the sweet pop strains of the series

theme and rush to pull up two chairs, wipe
their hands on apron or dish towel. Scallions

scatter green parentheses on the chopping block;
the faces of cubed potatoes cloud over from

neglect. Neither does it matter if they’ll be
five spoonfuls into dinner— more compelling

is the need to find out if the long-separated brothers
will finally recognize each other in “Triangle,”

or if in “One Well-raised Daughter,” the girl
could hope to inherit her parents’ soy

sauce factory without having to disguise
herself as a boy. Don’t the titles say it all:

“Yoo-na’s House,” “Make a Wish,” “Can We Love?”
Look closely and you’ll see how every space

is fraught with hope and tears and drama—
the couple glimpsed through the window

of the corner coffee shop are going through
a divorce, the teenager crying in the phone booth

has had her heart broken by the boy who doesn’t
even know she exists. From her great distraction,

the young housewife has sliced her thumb
instead of an onion, uncertain of how to tell

her husband and his mother of her recent miscarriage.
And inside the ordinary-looking house, down a screened

hallway leading to the servants’ quarters
and laundry room, the old housekeeper is secretly

taking a bowl of rice porridge to her employers’
teenage son whom they believe has gone missing,

though he was only terrified to show his face
after spending a night out at a party with friends.

Over time perhaps it is possible to understand
a little more about things: how the archives fill

with scraps that began as shoestrings, notes
to oneself written on cafe napkins; soft cotton

or rags tamped around a box to make it fit inside
a larger box. And the quaint customs and manners

fanned out like a tarot deck— the smiling cherub
of the self peeling off his other face to hold aloft,

the bird of opportunity and the peacock
of avarice; the wedding in the garden

and the animal quickly gored, in spite,
by its thrown-off rider. Start your careful

peeling off at one corner of the ear, to see
the body’s teeming highway of arteries and veins.

Each one breathes differently: imperceptible flutter
of moth wings, audible susurrus of breakers in the morning.

 

In response to Symbolical Head and Via Negativa: Existential Museuming.

When we entered the room,
I thought someone said “composition.”
My eye lit on a dog-eared legal pad
in the roll-top desk, and a Parker
fountain pen still in its velvet-backed case.
They all came from a time lit
by a different glow: not the blue light
from a monitor screen, but the warm
yellow lozenge cast by a Banker’s lamp.
We changed the bulb and pulled on the chain
several times to our satisfaction.
In one of the drawers I found
a lace doily with a coffee stain,
several small padlocks with rusted keys.
In none of the papers bundled with rubber
bands or twine could we find anything
resembling a will. There was one
savings passbook; there were no blank
or canceled checks. You can read
in the rubber-stamped ledgers tiny
numbers in purple ink showing
how nothing was overdrawn.