Chinese New Year by Justin Chin

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.