In the dream last night I was desperately arranging cut flowers for something important
The practical uses of my work I was not made aware of
Nobody was available to assist
Thus the flowers were strewn around the carpet beside me
I was compelled to finish my task by something greater than myself
The forces that acted upon me seemed to say “Your life depends upon this assemblage”
I took it as a warning, though provocative, though urgent and abstract
The bouquets were to be picked up as soon as I made the call
I admit, it felt good to be the lone member of mission control
There’s no point in talking of how time passes in a dream; I worked for minutes
Perhaps I worked for years
The only sound accompanying me was a song I played in my head about a sparrow
A Chinese folk song from somewhere
I did not transcend myself in the dream, nature did not want anything to do with me
I sliced the stems at an angle and dipped them in water
I was so alone in my freedom to choose, but because I was under deadline
I did not dare make a mistake
After some time, I stepped away from my work and admired the results
The outcome was beautiful, and because I had worked very hard: rare
*
We don’t remember how we got here, so have woven a beautiful story of replacement
You mispronounce my sacred name, always in front of others, there it goes
A fine white mist where once it held space for me
I didn’t write for the longest time because you were speaking for me
You had so many eyes trained on you, I wanted them only on me
In order for me to work towards an undoing of my condition, I must know
the characteristics of my condition
In order for me to know the characteristics of my condition, I must not be made
to feel alone in my perception of them
You are and have always been subject to randomness
Accept it
*
In World War II the chemical giants (Monsanto, DuPont) made a fortune
through exclusive government contracts to spray death from above
If you think about it for too long you will feel hysterical
You will point erratically at the audience in a frenzied state
You will stare at the miniature hurricane of Liquid Plumber spiraling down towards
the clog like a heavy godsend
*
Poems of the deadpan subject
Poems of the habitually deferred
Poems of the yellow hand and matching face
Poems of the song that feels like a secret
Poems of the fancy free
Poems of the who and what do I love now with all this money?
*
I had felt the similes falling away from my holy body
In sharp relief and judgment of you who have yet to recognize me
I wanted disgusting excess for my family this year, my food out of your mouth
But my practice was of looking at the image and conjuring it up from the margins
I was crying there in the great hall like something I had never felt
It was repugnant to words
You had your eyes trained on me crying in church
I was tired of being worn by you like fashion and hungry for my life to begin
I attempted to face the successes of those around me
*
Pedestrian thoughts again about the body in recovery
Fragile clock, weak and porous until suddenly in revolt
All these days stuck alone at home
Parents in the world are like a roving evaluation, never knowing where
their gaze will fall
On the mouse emerging from the wall
On the wall itself, in need of repair
A friend says “My accent never fails to make them laugh” and I catch myself laughing
Then laugh again at the brilliant entrapment
The completion of a closed misintentional loop
Lost to laughter now, unable to suck it back into my body
I read a testimony about the loneliness of large unfilled spaces and sense
my parents preparing to board the plane now
Little pleasures of my own: burping, fruit
*
Your historical loveliness knows no bounds
Who is Tank Man to you?
My what if and my thank god
Tank Man torn apart by my would-be friends
Tank man dancing immortal as a GIF
Tank Man as where you stop reading
Tank Man has been around the world but not back
Tank Man as my dead dad, as nobody you care to know
I left and I admit I did not turn around, how could I, I was still shitting in my diaper
Every June I look around and you are ordering Tank Man, I am reunited with him
on your plate
The day passes over you with grease on its wings
It was a luxurious silence, then a long sleep in the margins where my family owns a plot
Things as they are are inexorable
Time felt absolute and came back to humiliate me
I acknowledged language, my untrustworthy friend
A knowledge of my new home was anatomical and of many parts I was ashamed
Filled with an abstract grief
Tank Man doesn’t care about your velveteen ideas of protest
Tank Man finally on vacation on Martha’s Vineyard
Tank Man declining to be killed by you just a few more times
Tank Man as a cosmology of fetishized suffering at the center of the world
I had said to people “Is it funny”
If I am a social animal, I say much more or much less
*
Last night on the phone, bored to death while Dad live-translates my new poems
into Chinese
He probes the meaning behind phrases until I think “You just don’t get it”
Later he explains to me the metrics of Chinese classical verse and I think “I just
don’t get it,” and we laugh together
A sound not unlike a bell
It is beautiful to please one’s parents
Though somewhere it is written that piety is neither interesting nor progressive
*
Mom tells me a story: an immigrant arrives here
Eventually working second shift at a garment factory she saves up enough money
to purchase a used car
Then she must take a driving test
Then she must secure childcare to travel to the test but can’t afford it
She asks to bring her baby in the car and is granted permission
She is nervous and immediately places the car in reverse
Nearly fails then and there
The roads are covered with ice and you must imagine a brutal winter
It is dangerous for Mom and baby both
Who then, is at fault?
If your flight lands at JFK but the shuttle leaves from LaGuardia
And you must take a bus with your four rolling suitcases and baby
It’s not that you are afraid, but something entirely more particular
An ache that moves frequently and with greater purpose
*
Flowers carried on an invisible hand above the ocean, color peeling off of me
Ruled by Chinese astrology, which is to say mood, I eat the mooncake to prepare
for the new year
My sadness supplements my vision when I write
A factory where I reproduce myself daily, go nonverbal
Like beach trash and unanswered questions
*
Suppose I oppose the corporate merger of DuPont and Dow Chemical
After the merger, the mega company will be re-split into three new entities
One for textiles, one for chemicals, one for agriculture
The third of which employs not one but both of my parents
The layoffs are imminent and the mood in the office is tense
Dad missed his opportunity to transition laterally into academia and we are all nervous
Dad has acquired numerous bio-patents over the years, the prestige of which will likely
allow him to keep his job
He appears in the diversity initiative videos produced by the company
He brings them home on a little flash drive
I pull a knife across the grapefruit’s glistening skin and can’t bear to watch
*
Admit: that moment in time is completely imaginary
You do not remember nor can you ever
You call it up into being at will
Perhaps we did not even travel to the airport in any kind of hurry or under duress
Perhaps we stopped for lunch in the wide public square
Mom admired the perfectly manicured azaleas, the trim shrubbery
But it is a fact that there was unrest
Crowds violently dispersed only to reassemble at different points in the city
Traffic must have been very bad, though we might have bypassed it all by taking
the subway all the way to the terminal
Or the train on its reliable tracks
If we cried, it’s difficult to say what we mourned the loss of
There was so much we would not see again for many years
Did we pass through any checkpoints on the way to the airport?
Was Dad questioned for his timely departure from the country?
Did they ask him what he studied in Beijing, who he consorted with, his political views?
Do you support a democratic upheaval now or have you ever?
Why are you leaving today?
Is the department of molecular biology and research pro-West?
By design or by luck we boarded the plane
I didn’t cry once, the sweetest baby on an international flight the others had ever seen
Perhaps I became the star of the trip, passengers cooed over my impressive calm
Perhaps Mom and Dad cried in lieu of me
I had not yet known about my losing
*
A wish list:
You who have listed me first
You who follow
You who name me incorrectly
You who do nothing to find me
“You and Yours”
You who would bring up the rear
Your friends
Your enemies
You who would mispronounce me
You especially, saying nothing
*
Yesterday all I managed to write was a note to myself that reads “what is this poem
even about,” and unable to find the poem in question
In the ’90s my parents took what jobs they could get
With each paycheck we felt our loneliness coming to an end
Pointless cut flowers began to appear next to the kitchen sink
I will accelerate into carefree adulthood now, I might have said
A body follows a mind to the edge, and then what?
*
I need these parameters around my speech
They push on me sensually, and yet I am always still listening for you
I’m too sensitive to listen to criticism for longer than moments at a time
Mom says I’m getting too fat, and this is the Chinese way
She says look at your soft white hands
They’re perfect she says you are perfect
May you never shove them down firmly into the dirt of a farm and pull up
a root vegetable
May you never flex them to delay atrophy
May you never sweat in an unbecoming way or see the past the way we remember
In my past life I was a realist without the constitution for prose
Mom says I am so beautiful and overfed
Look at your smooth pale cuticles and oval nail beds
There is only one lifetime of praise in me, and I have not abandoned nostalgia just yet
*
I said I would write for her in the new year and send the drafts home in lieu of money
Unable to find the note that makes me sing, the text repeats my body into another
Where is the song finally trained upon me?
Not among the neon signage of the street at night
This poem is not for you
I only promised to approach the opening and let my tenses slip generously wide
This is where I come to be alone with words
I belly up to the sentence and live to construct this house for Mom and Dad
Can you imagine:
We used to answer the phone to declare our unknowing
“Hello! I do not speak English!”
“Thank you!”
Who, is it you?
Why are you calling?
I echo out miles at a time but not to you