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[mollymrgrt]

Father From Asia

Father, you turn your hands toward me.
Large, hollow bowls, they are empty
stigmata of poverty. Light pours
through them, and I back away,
for you are dangerous, father
of poverty, father of ten children,
father of nothing, from whose life
I have learned nothing for myself.
You are the father of childhood,
father from Asia, father of sacrifice.
I renounce you, keep you in my sleep,
keep you two oceans away, ghost
who eats his own children,
Asia who loved his children,
who didn't know abandonment,
father who lived at the center of the world, whose life I dare not remember,
for memory is a wheel that crushes,
and Asia is dust, is dust.

--Shirley Geok-lin Lim