The Sick Rose

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy;
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy

The Merlion

"I wish it had paws," you said,
"It's quite grotesque the way it is,
you know, limbless; can you
imagine it writhing in the water,
like some post-Chernobyl nightmare?
I mean, how does it move? Like a
torpedo? Or does it shoulder itself
against the currents, gnashing with frustration,
its furious mane bleached
the colour of a drowned sun?
But take a second look at it,
how it is poised so terrestrially,
marooned on this rough shore,
as if unsure of its rightful
harbour. Could it be that,
having taken to this unaccustomed limpidity,
it has decided to abandon the seaweed-haunted
depths for land? Perhaps it is even ashamed
(But what a bold front!)
to have been a creature of the sea; look at how
it tries to purge itself of its aquatic ancestry,
in this ceaseless torrent of denial, draining
the body of rivers of histories, lymphatic memories.
What a riddle, this lesser brother of the Sphinx.
What sibling polarity, how its sister's lips are sealed
with self-knowledge and how its own jaws
clamp open in self-doubt, still
surprised after all these years."

"Yet...what brand new sun can dry
the iridescent slime from the scales
and what fresh rain wash the sting of salt
from those chalk-blind eyes?"

A pause.

"And why does it keep spewing that way?
I mean, you know, I mean..."

"I know exactly what you mean," I said,
Eyeing the blond highlights in your black hair
And your blue lenses the shadow of a foreign sky.
It spews continually if only to ruffle
its own reflection in the water; such reminders
will only scare a creature so eager to reinvent itself."

Another pause.

"Yes," you finally replied, in that acquired accent of yours,
"Well, yes, but I still do wish it had paws."

Me

I
I have blonde hair
I pluck my eyebrows
I have my father’s nose
my mother’s hands
I have crooked teeth
and green eyes
I play guitar
I used to get sick alot
I like the color of wine
I’ve cheated on boyfriends
I’ve owned fake ID
But my hair is still blonde
and my teeth are still crooked
and I probably won’t always like
the color of wine
II
I have firm breasts
I have lips that always smile
I have veins that bleed
I laugh when I’m nervous
I feel the pain of others
but cry for no reason
I like open flame
I’ve been selfish since a child
I’m from Alaska
but hate the cold
I’ve cheated on diets
I’ve faked applications
But I still bleed
and my lips still smile
and my breasts won’t
always be firm

TIME

friend/foe
heals and rush
you control : Controls you
More

Bitcherel

You ask what I think of your new acquisition;
and since we are now to be 'friends',
I'll strive to the full to cement my position
with honesty. Dear - it depends.
It depends upon taste, which must not be disputed;
for which of us does understand
why some like their furnishings pallid and muted,
their cookery wholesome, but bland?
There isn't a law that a face should have features,
it's just that they generally do;
God couldn't give colour to all of his creatures,
and only gave wit to a few;
I'm sure she has qualities, much underrated,
that compensate amply for this,
along with a charm that is so understated
it's easy for people to miss.
And if there are some who choose clothing to flatter
what beauties they think they possess,
when what's underneath has no shape, does it matter
if there is no shape to the dress?
It's not that I think she is boring, precisely,
that isn't the word I would choose;
I know there are men who like girls who talk nicely
and always wear sensible shoes.
It's not that I think she is vapid and silly;
it's not that her voice makes me wince;
but - chilli con carne without any chilli
is only a plateful of mince...

Plum Blossom or Quong Tart at the QVB

Stroke by labored stroke my daughter

is discovering the sound of her name,

the new old country revealed under

her tiny preschool tentative hand.

She prints the pictogram mu,

a solid vertical stroke like a tree trunk,

a horizontal across for the arms, and a sinuous

downward branch on either side. That is

the radical for wood or tree. And on its right

she prints mei, meaning every, made up from a roof

over the pictogram for mother, mu,

with its nourishing embrace. Grafted on

the tree, it adds up to the talismanic

plum, tree and blossom.

It has been years since I have written

my true name. Watching

it appear in my daughter’s wavery hand

I am rooted, the calligraphy

performing strange magic.

No longer emigrant, foreign

but recalled home, and not to the country

left behind, but further back

beyond the South Sea.

Vague lost connections

somewhere south of the Yangtze.

Karst country, paddies

and mountains the color of jade

My daughter asks why the English

transliteration is Boey and not

Mei. I am stumped.

Many Chinese names

became strange or lost

in the crossing.

How did the first Mei, arriving

with his mother tongue in the colony,

find himself rechristened

Boey? How long did it take

him to grow into the name?

Did he shed it like his queue?

Did he roll it in his mouth, taste

its foreign plosive, swallow it

whole like a ball of rice,

and spit it out Boey,

the pig-tailed coolie in the new colony?

In a few years my daughter will press

for her family history and tree

and I will have nothing more to show

than the withered branch that is

her dead grandfather. So much

buried, irretrievable. It is too late

to ask my father about his father and the father

before. Broken branches. So little history

to go on. One of the homonyms

for mei is nothing. Mei as predicate

to another character erases

that character. The same rising tone

spells bad luck

which runs in the family, it seems.

Perhaps the plum will flourish

on this soil, like the white plum

in our yard, and transplanted,

my daughter can recover

what is lost in translation.

Perhaps she already has.

Last week, at the Queen Victoria Building,

we stumbled on an exhibition

of the life of Quong Tart, the Chinese

pioneer who made it good in White

Australia. A tea merchant,

he married a Scotswoman, sang

Border ballads and wore tartan kilts;

he fed the Aborigines

and played cricket with the whites.

The catalogue printed his original

name Mei, our clan. His face,

a replica of my father’s,

high cheekbones and well-shaped jaw,

had the same charming look. It was my father

made Mandarin of the Fifth Order,

costumed in silk tunic and plumed hat.

Somewhere in south-east China

the clan lived in the same village,

and broadcast rice seed

into paddies of broken skies.

Straw-hatted, they bowed

over plough and mattock,

planted in their reflections

like their name. Then news

came of richer harvests over

the South Sea, the white devils

and their burgeoning empire.

Perhaps great-grandfather sallied forth

with Quong Tart on the same junk,

and disembarked in Malaya, while Quong Tart

continued south. Perhaps they were brothers.

I see the other life my father could have had

staring out from the sepia shots,

if our forbear had travelled on

down-under. I could not explain

to my daughter the déjà vu, but her hand

was already pointing out the Mei

below Quong Tart’s portrait,

the tap of the finger

wiring us, connecting us

in a tremble of recognition.

She has finally learned

the character of her name.

Celluloid Gods

Now the gods reappear, as foretold.
Now a million eyes are held in trance,
a million bodies thrill to a communion
of light and sound, as the gods re-enact
The drama of grief, discrimination,
recrimination, slaughter and recompense.
A million beings pulse
 to the rhythm of one well-rehearsed passion,
a million hearts are in the same confessional,
subject to a single therapy.
(In obscure arenas, beyond the stagelights’ spill,
puny angers flare, combatants are restrained
from leaping out of windows, shadows lock
in mortal embrace, and desperate scholars worm
deeper into their books.) Tomorrow all tongues
will narrate the same cure, publish
the universal miracle. They will affirm
the truth of things witnessed, confirm
the prophesies of the tabloids, and when
the excitement subsides, there will be time
for these mortals to journey
to the paradises of merchandise,
to acquire the promises
flashed in the adverts
before their commerce with the gods
recommences.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.