John Ashbery Prize, 2017

 

My grandpa who eats steamed sweet potatoes on foothills textured in green rice patties

dreamt up a tall brick house with a black iron gate

barbwires sprung around the tips of the entrance to keep out thieves

wonders how long he can keep fibbing to my mother—

their rotten hut at the end of the massive foothill, not fleeting

monsoons come early, swells the ground till it gave

a landslide takes four people and a child

that day, red stars hung above Tiananmen square gates 

ground bones came in bags, white cement hauled by green skin trucks

 

My grandpa who loves sweet potatoes constructs an ivory wall. 

 

after the revolution, the sun peeks out in montages

peering through the smoke

gunpowder stuck to the tank tire roads 

black heads roll off yellow tar dirt into a pit

My grandpa gives his best friend five hundred dollars— 

visas for my mother and grandma, 

His best friend disappears,

 

writes my grandpa

an apology and, leaves him a large sack of uncooked sweet potatoes

 

light tan, severs in half and plops down on the lumpy cutting board,

dusty orange inners, grandpa tosses them in the boiling water

and later, while gnawing down, 

he pretends they are oranges for once

 

My grandpa who eats sweet potatoes is sick of them.

 

Grandpa, who’s kneeling on our dried front yard with a worn out copper pail

waters the salty earth slowly until it sprouts sugar canes

chops one down, breaks it in half, the sun beats

peering through palm leaves

a viridescent river of silk and pale honey

my small three year arms grab a handful 

sliced by grandpa into pieces neatly placed

in a blue flowered ceramic bowl

years later, I chop one down and chew until

English becomes a second language again 

and in my twenties, I grab a handful

sliced by mom into pieces, placed in a weaved basket

made of reinforced bamboo

I put it in front of my grandpa’s grave

in Fujian on the foggy mountainside

of a small willow town on the edge of the South

China coast covered in plastic smog,

I eat sweet potatoes with my grandpa facing outward

toward a kneeing sun,

a red hot summer in the city where my fingers

dig into sugar cane bark.

Waiting for my friends,

eating oranges from California.