Each morning, before the sun rises
over the bay of Villefranche-sur-Mer
                           on the Côte d’Azur, cruise ships drop anchor

so that motor launches from shore
                           can nurse alongside. All afternoon we studied
les structures où nous sommes l’objet, structures

                           in which we are the object—le soleil
me dérange, le Côte d’Azur nous manque—
                          while the pompiers angled their Bombardiers

down to the sea, skimming its surface
                           like pelicans and rising, filled
with water to drop on inland, inaccessible

                          wildfires. Once, a swimmer was found face down
in a tree like the unfledged robin I saw
                          flung to the ground, rowing

its pink shoulders as if in the middle
                          of the butterfly stroke, rising a moment
above water. Oiseau is the shortest word

                          in French to use all five vowels: “the soul
and tie of every word,” which Dante named
                          auieo. All through December, a ladybug circles

high around the kitchen walls looking for
                         spring, the way we search for a word that will                                         hold
all vows and avowals: eunoia, Greek

                         for “beautiful thinking,” because the world’s
a magic slate, sleight of hand—now
                         you see it, now you don’t—not exactly

a slight, although in Elizabethan English, “nothing”
                         was pronounced “noting.” In the Bodleian                                               Library
at Oxford, letters of the alphabet hang

                         from the ceiling like the teats
of the wolf that suckled Romulus
                         and Remus, but their alibi

keeps changing, slate gray like the sea’s
                        massage: You were more in me than I was
in me. . . . You remained within while I

                        went outside. Hard to say
whether it was Augustine
                        speaking to God or my mother

talking to me. Gulls ink the sky
                       with view, while waves throw themselves
on the mercy of the shore.
 

I like to say we left at first light
        with Chairman Mao himself chasing us in a police car,
my father fighting him off with firecrackers,
        even though Mao was already over a decade
dead, & my mother says all my father did
        during the Cultural Revolution was teach math,
which he was not qualified to teach, & swim & sunbathe
        around Piano Island, a place I never read about
in my American textbooks, a place everybody in the family
        says they took me to, & that I loved.
What is it, to remember nothing, of what one loved?
        To have forgotten the faces one first kissed?
They ask if I remember them, the aunts, the uncles,
        & I say Yes it’s coming back, I say Of course,
when it’s No not at all, because when I last saw them
        I was three, & the China of my first three years
is largely make-believe, my vast invented country,
        my dream before I knew the word “dream,”
my father’s martial arts films plus a teaspoon-taste 
        of history. I like to say we left at first light,
we had to, my parents had been unmasked as the famous
        kung fu crime-fighting couple of the Southern provinces,
& the Hong Kong mafia was after us. I like to say
        we were helped by a handsome mysterious Northerner,
who turned out himself to be a kung fu master.
        I don’t like to say, I don’t remember crying.
No embracing in the airport, sobbing. I don’t remember
        feeling bad, leaving China.
I like to say we left at first light, we snuck off
        on some secret adventure, while the others were
still sleeping, still blanketed, warm
        in their memories of us.
What do I remember of crying? When my mother slapped me
        for being dirty, diseased, led astray by Western devils,
a dirty, bad son, I cried, thirteen, already too old,
        too male for crying. When my father said Get out,
never come back, I cried & ran, threw myself into night.
        Then returned, at first light, I don’t remember exactly
why, or what exactly came next. One memory claims
        my mother rushed into the pink dawn bright
to see what had happened, reaching toward me with her hands,
        & I wanted to say No. Don’t touch me.
Another memory insists the front door had simply been left
        unlocked, & I slipped right through, found my room,
my bed, which felt somehow smaller, & fell asleep, for hours,
        before my mother (anybody) seemed to notice.
I’m not certain which is the correct version, but what stays with me
        is the leaving, the cry, the country splintering.
It’s been another five years since my mother has seen her sisters,
        her own mother, who recently had a stroke, who has                          trouble
recalling who, why. I feel awful, my mother says,
        not going back at once to see her. But too much is                              happening here.
Here, she says, as though it’s the most difficult,
        least forgivable English word. 
What would my mother say, if she were the one writing?
        How would her voice sound? Which is really to ask, what is
my best guess, my invented, translated (Chinese-to-English,
        English-to-English) mother’s voice? She might say:
We left at first light, we had to, the flight was early,
        in early spring. Go, my mother urged, what are you doing,
waving at me, crying? Get on that plane before it leaves without you.
        It was spring & I could smell it, despite the sterile glass
& metal of the airport—scent of my mother’s just-washed hair,
        of the just-born flowers of fields we passed on the car ride                over,
how I did not know those flowers were already
        memory, how I thought I could smell them, boarding the                  plane,
the strange tunnel full of their aroma, their names
        I once knew, & my mother’s long black hair—so impossible              now.
Why did I never consider how different spring could smell,              feel,
        elsewhere? First light, last scent, lost
country. First & deepest severance that should have
        prepared me for all others. 

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,—the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,—I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, “Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.”

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, “He is a madman.” I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, “Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.”

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.

On a walk past bulldozers and trucks
pouring tarmac for the NJ Eisenhower highway
my grandmother said to me as we turned

into a market with olive barrels, hanging 
meat, piles of sumac and coriander—
“he shakes away my blues.” It was 1959,

and what did I know about starving  
in the Syrian desert or the Turkish whips 
that lashed the bodies of Armenian 

women on the roads of dust. I wouldn’t 
have believed that she saw 
those things. The radio 

was always on the sink in my grandmother’s 
kitchen. “He’s a whirling dervish” she said—
whirling dervish—the whoosh of the phrase 

stayed with me. I too felt his trance—
even then—as she pounded spices
with a brass mortar and pestle.

The air on fire under him
the red clay of Macon dusting his bones.

What did I know about Sufism 
Sister Rosetta or bird feet at the Royal Peacock?

In the yard the bittersweet is drying up,
the berries turning gold and red.
The way memory deepens with light. 

His shaking gospel voice. The heart
going up in flames. My grandmother
survived the worst that humans do.

^{Lines suggested by the tenor of a friendly interview between the author and the editor of the Chieftain in reference to the capture and incarceration of Crazy Snake, the Muskogee patriot.}

“Truth crushed to earth will rise again,”
   ’Tis sometimes said. False! When it dies,
Like a tall tree felled on the plain,
   It never, never more, can rise.

Dead beauty’s buried out of sight;
   ’Tis gone beyond the eternal wave;
Another springs up into light,
   But not the one that’s in the grave.

I saw a ship once leave the shore;
   Its name was “Truth;” and on its board
It bore a thousand souls or more:
   Beneath its keel the ocean roared.

That ship went down with all its crew.
   True: other ships as proud as she,
Well built, and strong, and wholly new,
   Still ride upon that self-same sea.

But “Truth,” and all on her embarked
   Are lost in an eternal sleep,
(The fatal place itself unmarked)
   Far down in the abysmal deep.

Let fleeing Aguinaldo speak;
   And Oc̅eola from his cell;
And Sitting Bull, and Crazy Snake;
   Their story of experience tell.

There is no truth in all the earth
   But there’s a Calvary and a Cross;
We scarce have time to hail its birth,
   Ere we are called to mark its loss.

The truth that lives and laugh’s a sneak,
   That crouching licks the hand of power,
While that that’s worth the name is weak,
   And under foot dies every hour.

The life of a garment worker in midtown Manhattan.

She worked as seamstress in the sweatshops of New York City.

Whose mother is not the love of their life?

She pushed her lunch on co-workers

from Russia, Togo, Haiti, Dominican Republic.

They disliked the sugar fried anchovies.

They saw the nimbus on each fish

and politely or raucously declined. The cavernous

spaces of her mind. Having studied graphic design

at Duksung Women’s College, Dobong-gu, Seoul,

what else was she going to do but write a novel.

Staring at sea windows, she scrawled and chalked

in her head. Drong of eternal absence. An expert

on the social history of the Staten Island Ferry,

she confided in me the act of crying was a privilege.

What type of person leaves a near full can of

coconut water on the bleachers? You have to be

happy in order to weep, or sob. I can teach you,

she said to me. If you can hold a pencil, I can teach you

how to draw. But I’ve known people who have

no hands. Who have no fingers.

To flower from seeds,
to make roots from water
means there’s a tending

or soft beginning like tenderness.
Delicate young germination

from soil. My baby. My soil as a noun.
A piece of ground from the Old French for sol.
A native lightness. The sol rises in Texas too.

Rising like a verb, there’s no stillness
to the threshold—another word for the bottom of a door,
meaning there’s a sill soiled. A sill or cut timber. Laid
& crossed over. To soil a verb meaning

there is original sin, meaning before dirt
there was cleanliness. No entry, no violation

of God. A mess of seeds that needs
water. Give us a mess of thick mud. 

            Que chiquero.             Standing still like a cleansing
after a gentle roll-around. Wallowing in a field

como un puerco. Madrugando            con hambre—
I am your shepherd. I am ready for battle

with the pastured sky
you fought so hard against

their beanstalks growing upside down, reaching for hell.

After dinner, I’m mailed back to my father in a suitcase.

The tablecloth is edible. Gold is edible. God is edible too.

Don’t believe the words on the table—they’re not food.

I’m worried someone will walk in and take my plate away.

The men I grew up with ate white rice burritos.

Sometimes the stars feel nearby. Sometimes they write.

When my parents fought about rent, the ends of my body came and went.

My father climbs out of my body at night in search of gold chains

He can pawn at Don Roberto Jewelers.

At some point, a pattern will emerge—at some point, all of it will make sense.

A vast table, laid out with fruits, vegetables, and smoked meats.

Gold is edible. Fathers are edible too.

Mom makes a list of chores for my brother and I to avoid being slapped

Or asked to assume the position from across the room.

We are nuisances, embarrassments, party-squatters to teenage parents.

At my cousin’s wedding: birria, red rice and potato salad.

Then into the bathroom—I go.

I try but can’t stop putting certain things inside me.

For a long time, I thought all girls were disciplined this way,

Thrown into the dark to reckon with thoughts.

He told me the vein inside had broken—put that in my book.

Fairy tales about girls who’ve been wronged.