The Immigrant
I haven't written a poem the last
few years.
My writing stopped when father died.
Grief welled up, took up that space.
To be honest, I was busy in the
space
Between work and family, year by
year.
The city lost its noise and
heat, also died.
He came in the 60s, a chinaman
living his years
Through work, family. He saw beauty
here, dying
Where he dreamed and took up
space.
A pinwheel spins. This year of dying
things.
A body caves, its space
collapsing.
November overheard/ inside
1.
I'm pretending to be dead inside and
out.
Mr. Feig in wartime Shanghai:
Scared
but alive.
Or hummingbird,
my friend, in the mists near Cuenca,
drilling through until finally—
2.
I woke up November 9th to the fact
of it,
and the telling of it like a fairy
tale. Later I cried.
My babies, beautiful, brown, eyes
the color of ancient
lakes somewhere between the Alps and
Phrygia.
I held them. Terror can gnaw.
We look at a subway map.
I never noticed Nero
Avenue before.
A triumphal march undoing
something that should always be
marked with an X.
A treasure, an aspiration.
3.
My father hated NAFTA,
taxes. Liked big gruff talk.
Loved New York. But he moved at the end of his life
with a gentle gait, a radiance
in his face. He just strived
and strived for us and at the end,
there was no meanness left.
4.
I looked up Tule Lake the other
day.
We imagined the rash of
blackberries in the garden
to be Great Salt Lake. And
Tule Lake?
I'm pretending to be alive inside
and out.
But where do our bodies go
when we breathe?
Thirty-six views from the mountain
When you were born, your grandfather
was still alive.
We listened to Mahalia Jackson that
Christmas. You,
skinny, all squirming limbs and watchful
eyes.
He watches us, you know. Sees
us from above.
His smile fanning a thousand
wrinkles across the sea.
He watches America and the
great burning rage at the heart of it.
He came when it was white hot but it
simmered and seethed,
erupted periodically, a grating
between the earth's plates. He sees.
I often dream of Aeneas bearing
his father's weight on his back.
I was born a Trojan prince, believing
in perseverance and piety, family.
Didn't you know, silly boy?
Believing in the greatness of my city.
We can imagine ourselves to be
anyone. In this instance,
we stay the course because it is our lives.
Our lives.back to contents
