(no subject)
RAGGED RED BLANKEY, DONE IN BY TIME AND GRAVITY
the thread tore.
the division like magic.
drawing a line of chill between
head and knees. i wake bereaved.
what was that dream?
Shanghai? was that you calling?
i don't remember such green.
but maybe i do, anyway.
here, 1987. i am born two months early
and bundled like a zongzi in a blanket.
my arms are thin as bamboo shoots
but inside i am sweet-smelling like rice.
you can't remember that.
maybe someone told me.
the feel of thin urban dirt between toes
as upstairs my aunt threw a pair of shoes
my father had sent me in patent black
down four flights aiming for my feet.
i dreamed, i think.
connection established.
lifestream of the city. impressions of
chestnuts fry-roasted in sugar grains
dry sweet not syrupy firm smooth flesh
grandpa's whiskers going gray
careful scritch-scratch of a razor
squatting vendor dialect rounded
country provincial not-Shanghainese
bikes lugging bales high as three men
those three men squatting smoking
ghost in the machine. coded in whispers
translucent buildings about to be born
in verdant glass mirrored like fly eyes
American money flowing in a river of zeros
to rival the churning Yang Zi Jian
but you cannot know this
you cannot. not yet. this is
revisioning. re-envisioning
for memory is smoke, is mirrors, is smog, is gone.
whisper on the tongue.
was i eating sweets?
how long have i had
this to keep me warm?
yanked from the earth, four and tender as a shoot
was i, and bleeding. i lost my roots, flung--
rootless. the disconnect is the void.
forced into a sorceror's metal bird, i was skyward,
pressurized and frozen, industrial processes,
even as I wailed and forced my limbs down. no use. ripped
rootless. in the Promised Land. they called it Mei Guo.
which means "Beautiful Country," milk and honey,
richest soil in the world crumbling to dust beneath
truncated limbs. nowhere to run (home to) for the
rootless. little dwarf. and you wither, frozen.
did you only dream of sweetness?
it is all bitter cud, the blood of grass.