Chinese New Year
It is Chinese New Year and I am standing
at the corner of Broadway and Kearny
feeling the warm brush of bodies scurrying
into stores frantic, pleased
and brisk with the glow of celebration.
Soon the gleaming roast ducks,
the carefully spit-turned roasted pork ribs,
the translucent skinned chicken steamed
in sesame oil and the raw fish tossed
in lettuce, mint and peanut sauce
will grace someone’s table:
a feast of richness, a wish
of prosperity,
a life of blessing.
No heads will be washed today, no houses swept
& don’t think about death: it’s bad
luck. I cast my numbers,
and as I age another year,
superstitions don’t hold their weight
anymore than voodoo heebie-jeebie
medicinal claims.
So come take me Year of the Monkey:
witty, articulate, passionate, youthful, vain, immature.
Make me happy with your promises
of luck and life
because it is Chinese New Year
and for a few blocks, the train
of pom pom girls, the Lowell High School band
and sequined Ms. Chinatown will pass
on the same streets where I opened my body
in the rattle of festivities, the creed
of color, the spook of flesh.
You took the uncompromising facts
of my living. Spread it out maplike
as a dangerous game. Spy vs. Spy
like in MAD magazine. You appear to me
as golden frogs. You pour rain water
from pitchers colored with familiarity over me.
I bathe in smells of palm oil, rubber
sap, cannon fodder. Fireworks
grace my feet. I put white
smoke billowing from homemade
crackers on your forehead.
Somehow this might soothe your pain
and mine. Tie ginger in sackcloth,
the tips soaked in kerosene. Suck
illness right out. Strength
nudes itself to my scrawny arms
barely able to throw a good punch
and your life starts unraveling
as mine reveals itself in
this viral flash. A 25¢ peepshow
separated by a sliding opaque
screen flashing ex-lovers,
ex-boyfriends, one night stands, blind dates
and ex-families. Tokens
fill empty jars in our respective rooms.
Candles light the stuff of our
secrets. Sometimes we lie like mad
and civility spurts
like Chinese New Year and I come
festooned with ashes and bones,
hard crumbling and all
too memorable. Miserable. Teal
pours from my mouth. Blood
of every wound, every conceivable
brilliance hides in my hair.
The hard work of walking and waking
ploughs itself in my skull
and I am ready to be brimmed
with the tasks of renewals
and burials.
I have prepared for my feasting.
I’ve paid my debts. I’ve housecleaned:
updated the address book, keeping
the names and numbers unused
anymore, written in disparate script
each, in its safe place.
The last grounding on memory must be respected.
On the day that I am nothing more
than handwriting in some trick’s
book, I will return to your memory
and the hundreds of others.
I will stand in pink fog.
Cats will breathe silent over me.
Talismans will hang from my chest.
Shiny prophecies will pierce my nipples.
My flesh will be smooth as cold coffee.
I will be a haunting
that speaks across waters, borders
and peacetime.
Did I ever think I would make it this far?
Did I make it anywhere at all?
For now, let’s push all that
to the back of our minds like shame,
let’s wave to Ms. Chinatown,
fill our bellies with food and laughter,
entertain our guests, visitors,
families, tell stories — real
and made up, be together, make love, sweat
into each other’s body because
it is Chinese New Year and I’m filling
my trays with candies, peanuts, kana,
sweets, embers, hard, nothing;
and I am looking
for the reddest red, the sweetest meats,
the loudest firecrackers and the hardest
plum blossoms to help me make
another year.
