Before you came,
things were as they should be:
the sky was the dead-end of sight,
the road was just a road, wine merely wine.

Now everything is like my heart,
a color at the edge of blood:
the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, the season ablaze,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the coal of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt wet with tears,
the road a vein about to break,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the world keep changing.

Don’t leave now that you’re here—
Stay. So the world may become like itself again:
so the sky may be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

I will swing my lasso of headlights

across your front porch,

let it drop like a rope of knotted light

at your feet.

While I put the car in park,

you will tie and tighten the loop

of light around your waist —

and I will be there with the other end

wrapped three times

around my hips horned with loneliness.

Reel me in across the glow-throbbing sea

of greenthread, bluestem prickly poppy,

the white inflorescence of yucca bells,

up the dust-lit stairs into your arms.

If you say to me, This is not your new house

but I am your new home,

I will enter the door of your throat,

hang my last lariat in the hallway,

build my altar of best books on your bedside table,

turn the lamp on and off, on and off, on and off.

I will lie down in you.

Eat my meals at the red table of your heart.

Each steaming bowl will be, Just right.

I will eat it all up,

break all your chairs to pieces.

If I try running off into the deep-purpling scrub brush,

you will remind me,

There is nowhere to go if you are already here,

and pat your hand on your lap lighted

by the topazion lux of the moon through the window,

say, Here, Love, sit here — when I do,

I will say, And here I still am.

Until then, Where are you? What is your address?

I am hurting. I am riding the night

on a full tank of gas and my headlights

are reaching out for something.

                           ^{Peace will come when the Arabs will love 
                           their children more than they hate us.      
                                                   —Golda Meir, 
                                                    served as prime minister of the 
                                                    colonial entity in Palestine from 
                                                     1969–1974}  

                           ^{There will never be peace
                           with people who don’t want peace.        
                                                   —Baba}
                  

When the martyr died in my arms,
I pleaded in the name of the prophet, 
in the name of Mariam and their Messiah, 
let me go, let me go.

They came and wanted to abduct the young man, 
accusing him of smuggling guns.
I stood in the commander’s way. 
He hit me and threw me 
to the ground. 

They came to get our boy.
They tried to put him in the car.
They couldn’t.
They couldn’t put him in the car.
They couldn’t.
I was there. 

I was screaming for the boy’s relatives to come. 
They tried to take a boy, the son of my uncle, 
the son of my land, away.
Me, I don’t accept. I don’t accept.

The balad gathered.

All the villages came together.
Everyone. The big, the small, the well, the ill, 
the one holding a child on her hip. 
The betrayers were armed and they had their cars
but the people were not afraid. 

I am giving you the abridged version.

They had beat the boy until he leaned against the wall immobile. 

The commander got a gun from the car, they call it an M16.

The boy against the wall, they stabbed him with the bayonet, 
and sprayed bullets at the feet of 
the people, the women, the children, the men. 

They got in the car and tried to leave but 
all of our people had rocks in their hands.
The boys of our village blocked the road with their cars.
Where there was not a car, the people put boulders. 

The men who killed our boy ran on their feet 
to the village next to us. 

The next day they sent their commanding officer, an Israeli, 
to investigate the killing.

We all stood in protest by the wall where the boy was killed. 
We were occupied. They occupied us. 

Because I was there, because I held the dying boy in my arms, 
the commanding officer came to speak to me. 

I grabbed him, the Israeli, by the collar 
and pulled him close
and said:
From here, you leave. 
We are not hiding anyone here. 
From here, you leave. Leave.

We’ll sell the baby to buy ourselves guns
and you will leave from here. 

He said: 
You are crazy. You are crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

You know he doesn’t know how to speak Arabic well. 

Everyone pleaded that I let him go.

Praise the god of your god, ya bint Abu Ali,
it was Qassem Akil Abu Nazih who said that.

I did not do this because I want people to praise me. 
I have inside me a need to tell the truth.

Why did our son have to die?
We had a funeral.
We buried our dead.
Above were their jets.

We were occupied.
The funeral was a funeral and it was a protest.

When they came to take the boy and then killed him, 
and they ran away on their feet 
to the next village, 
our boys set their car on fire.

It burned. 

They waited a month to exact their return. 

I was pregnant at the time. 
The martyr’s name was Hussein. 
Tell them his name. Hussein Abedelhassan Akil 
from the village of Jibbayn. His mother is Badriye. 
Everyone there knows.

They kidnapped three boys 
and put them in prison. Your uncle among them.

And what about Salim? 
Over there, oh soul of mine, he arrived at the door of Ansar 
to free the prisoners, 
the airplane shot him and his companion. 
God wrote for them martyrdom. 

They took me to prison too. 
I was in the field with two other women riding two donkeys. 
The roads were blocked. We passed through the field instead.
On the way back, we saw a skull on the road. 
Another boy’s skull, a bag, right there on the road.

Just yesterday, yesterday, I saw a video.
A tank rolled over where was Hussein’s grave. 
All the houses are now gone.

I wish I’d saved him. 
I wish.
I held him in my hands, my niece. 
Had he run north, he would have escaped.

They came back and my boy had been born. 
I named him Hussein.

They returned with airstrikes 
on seven of our houses. 

My son is calling me, habibti. I have to go.
You know, Moses crossed the water, habibti, 
and the pharaoh’s army       haha        did not.

My homie, full of brief fire, declares he’d help kill  
and I say “Nah, free them people,” and he has ceased  
to admit what I, too, cease to admit: in this cage  
we don’t know how to talk about politics.

There ain’t no Kant here, no Augustine, or political  
thought leader without Machiavellian teeth. We kill  
the parts of us, or at least bury the bones, that ceased  
to be useful in the jungle. Our tongues are in cages.

Our eyes are in cages. Our hearts, in cages.  
Yet, there are no wars here now. Only prison politics  
for my homie and I to profit from or dead  
the smaller beefs until the gangs have ceased

the battle over disputed territories. War never stops;  
it hibernates, even here in the joint—cage  
governed by shadows, they are living the politics  
of occupation, trying to avoid being killed.

Meanwhile, my homie and I count years as we feed  
the beast of time we are lucky to have. Our bodies began,  
long ago, and still, to be seen and classified as field  
weapons in this occupied land of the free.

The world undresses 
its wounds. It wounds. This Father— 
His memory, torn 
clouds: forgetful weather. 
God’s goodness licks 
bowls bone-clean. Our fingers 
twist crumbs from air. 
We are hungry children 
abandoned by our country 
for bombs. For Rockets’ Red glare. How 
could we ever be patriots? 
My father is my flag. 
The national anthem is 
every word, every single word 
my mother could not whisper— 
could not say, 
could not say: 
her father colonized her. 
Made her mother nasty with jealousy. 
Could not say: she can’t stay 
In this world of touching. 
It maims. 
It elects evil. 
It is two gendered. 
It kneels on Sunday. 
The Lord is 
American & 
aims His rifle 
at us, His children 
once beggars 
rise into guerrillas.

what do I wear to deliver my book
into the world
as it is today
monologued by a woman
a former interrogator and torturer
what would she wear
to the inauguration ceremony
of a museum
of her own imagination on full display
a celebration of the practice
not carried out by one regime, but an enterprise
global and interdisciplinary
stretched out throughout histories
the banality of evil on full display
men in full armor genociding
men in suits smiling to the cameras
and telling journalists they are looking into it
what a torturer wears to a press conference
proud of her alliances
her feminist motto
making history
the madam is “redefining the power suit,” the headline says
her Chucks saw a 4500% increase in online interests
how much does the madam’s suit from Chloé cost?
she says she fully supports
the men behind the ashes and the debris and the skeletons
her closet website lists it all—the suits, the jewelry, the shoes, the outerwear, the accessories, the
casual wear, the formal wear, the home wear
there is a section for the recently identified and for the recently worn
the madam says Iran is the number one enemy
the child, her teeth broken, her hair disheveled, carries her sister on her back
says of course she’s tired
says her sister’s leg is hurt
she will carry her sister
the road stretches behind them and in front of them
the man takes the children to his car, gives them a ride
the decorations of death have risen in many front yards
plastic skeletons and gravestones
the hollowed-out eyes
the desire for horror
store bought and cheap

what are the tax percentages on the receipts?
other children hug the dogs
hold on to
the necessary embrace
in a shelter that cannot shelter
the dogs stare at the camera
in shock, their eyes cannot even blink
staring into
he cares for the cats
asks us to be kind to animals
the mother who mothered him into mothering the animals was killed
his daughter was born
he feeds the cats, washes the eyes, heals the wounds
a child was once upon a time running on another stretch of road, all naked
the girl in the picture
the terror of war
the madam wants to look “finished but not overtly fabulous.”
what to wear to the event
launching the book that exposes the complicity
of the scholars and the feminists and the experts and the psychologists and the researchers
of another madam
shattering the glass ceiling optimizing the cleansing
writing the words for land acknowledgements
how do the words rise off the page
to be voiced through a mouth
that welcomes the killing
of the gray horse stuck in the rubble
of the houses
of the humans targeted
a blue sky behind her
in her undefeated resistance of hope and life
our wizard reminds us that no occupation lasts forever

His tongue shorn, father confuses
snacks for snakes, kitchen for chicken.
It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap
silverware at yard sales. I am told by mother
to keep our telephone number close,
my beaded coin purse closer. I do this.
The years are slow to pass, heavy-footed.
Because the visits are frequent, we memorize
shame’s numbing stench. I nurse nosebleeds,
run up and down stairways, chew the wind.
Such were the times. All of us nearsighted.
Grandmother prays for fortune
to keep us around and on a short leash.
The new country is ill-fitting, lined
with cheap polyester, soiled at the sleeves.

Once, the past was in dialogue with the future, a hybrid form. The origin of the word hybrida is Latin, from ibrida, or ‘mongrel’—a creature of mixed breeds. Open interpretation of violence, collision of selves, histories, and languages. Is language a movement of spirits or bodies making themselves known through their outward mutation? My parents came from China and migrated to Taiwan, ultimately arriving in the U.S. I was born in America, contributing to a long line of mixed culture, crossed boundaries, the collaborative and combustible nature of words. If I grew up with dual language, dual identity, how can anything feel both one and unified?

 

The fragmentation of the zuihitsu welcomes me randomness, collage, a piecing (and piercing) of memory and imagination that adds up to feeling akin to liberation. The liberation of imagination is the body’s response to dominance and containment. To build, speak, and write a way through each darkness. Zuihitsu, erasure, re-imagined ekphrastic poems, words in movement, journalism in conversation with invented narrative, fairy tales fused with the lyric imagination, language in dialogue with visual art—much of it isn’t entirely new, but now, written with a singular hand, calls to me. I think of discomfort, creating spaces where one is uneasy in order to change. 

 

Immigrant body, female body, mother body.

Is the creative body inherently vulnerable?

Damaged body. Dream body. Fluid body. Boy body.

˜ 

During a recent panel discussion about hybrid forms at Sarah Lawrence College Aracelis Girmay described the present generation, as made up of not two arms, but many appendages, like octopuses. She was careful not to say octopi. That wasn’t quite the word she envisioned as she held out her arms as if to touch something multi-limbed, iridescent. 

In the same discussion, Rachel Zucker said, “Motherhood is a hybrid form and there haven’t been enough discussions about this language.” This utterance struck me: lexicon of mother, collage of maternal self, fusion of artistic forms made manifest through the lens of protection. But this language is often ignored, buried, dismissed or dismantled. Mangled by teeth. An entire landscape of language. 

Raising a boy who is black and Asian in this country, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I never truly confronted the full spectrum of race in my past, at least not enough. Race was never a vessel but a land that bled into the tide. It surged, carried me forward, and then I arrived at my body. I try not to cast my own identity aside to understand my son’s. Sometimes, I feel that old self fading away. I attempt to hang on and let go at once. Sometimes, when the room is populated, I search the borders for my own disappearance. 

Anyone who has ever been born of mixed race feels this inheritance. Often, gestured as an in-between state, it’s unlike having one foot in one territory or another. Anyone who has been born of several races, cultures, reaches for a bottomless depth. I sit before a large scale illustration made into a postcard. It’s a detail from a children’s book by Jostein Gaarder called Questions Asked. The illustration by Akin Duzakin shows a self and what seems to be a shadow-self diving into the depths of water. It feels like this: questions with no end. If one lives within this feeling, it doesn’t provide comfort but being. The diving down does not come without breathlessness: Fathomless foundation of questions, and a wooden trunk filled with more gleaming questions. 

Perhaps there is a world down there.

˜ 

By raising a boy, do I understand what it means to live as a black boy? How do I speak of his existence without appropriating his existence? I return to the language of mothers. 

˜

 

At a reading, I spoke about giving birth and raising a black son. I was told that someone in the audience Googled, “Tina Chang and Black Son.” I don’t think anyone will find any information anywhere about this except in my poems. It’s not Google-able, Google searched or defined: My son found within a search engine. When he was born, our mutual exhaustion was a hybrid sound. 

Media can obliterate a spirited word (world). 

I am not the same person I was yesterday and form allows me to speak this fact. 

&

 

 

My longest poem focuses on a boy rising from his beginnings in the womb and living in a body made vulnerable by authorities. There are clippings, diagrams, evidence that speak toward the poems that surround them. The fragmented form like zuihitsu has a place here. How can we make sense of chaos? What is the form for that? 

Google-able fact: “Unarmed black people were killed at five times the rate of unarmed whites in 2015” (Mapping Police Violence). 

Google-able fact: “There is no federal database that tracks the number of people of any race killed by police. Some individuals and groups have compiled their own databases, such as The Root and Hiphopandpolitics.com, using information from media and law enforcement reports” (Los Angeles Times).

Non-Google-able fact: When my son wakes from his dream, he finds me in another room folding clothes. He lies down next to me on the sofa. In his dream we are separated. There is an elsewhere, he says, where children sleep and never wake. I touch his forehead which now feels hot with fever.

&

List of the times my son has registered hurt: 

- His friend kicks him in the spine. The mother of the boy does not notice.

- A neighbor asks him if he has a gun in his pocket.

- He realizes we are not the same person.

- He walks up to a group of boys in his class. Turns back to me, asks me to say goodbye one more time. 

- He mentions under his breath that I never listen to his stories.

- When I defend him too fiercely. He storms away. Locks the door.

- A white boy steals his school snacks and he is hungry. When he tells a head teacher, she doesn’t believe him. 

- My mother calls his hair crazy. She asks him to cut it each time she sees him.

- We play basketball and when he can’t get the ball in the basket, he runs away and hides.

- My friend tells me that all the girls like the blonde, blue-eyed boy in the class. When I’m silent she says, “They like your boy too, of course.”

- I asked him to get out of bed. Instead, he stood on his mattress and raised both arms up.

- Outside his window, he views police officers surround a man. He doesn’t know if he should feel for the officers or the man standing at the center, panting hard.

- He often tells me he doesn’t understand the meanness of boys. Mentions maybe it’s better to stand somewhere in the middle or somewhere alone.

- In the basement of my home, his friend straddles him, punches him in the head over a dozen times. He did not sound out or call for help. Later, he said my husband told him never to hit a girl so he laid there waiting for the punches to stop. 

- I was far from the house. 

- I was not home.

˜ 

I sometimes try not to register his pain. When I do, I often find myself immobile. 

˜ 

 

Hybrid forms leave fences open. They are wide fields with snow leopards, wolves, and honey bees. The combustion of imaginings forms a lake, water spreading, explosions on the surface of an oil slick. 

Hybrida is the change of properties. Long ago the earth plates shifted, came together in new permutations. New land. New World. It permits a space to be wounded, sutured, broken again, and untied to float to a beyond. 

This mixed presence is a ghost, converses with the living. What lingers sounds like leaves crushed beneath feet, or the light that remains on after you’ve distinctly shut it, the house in the field over there, the one that keeps living whether you view it or not. Lights in the upstairs room. Shadows move when the wind changes its mind. It seems inhabited, doesn’t it?

 ˜

I am afraid for vocabulary and its presence in the struggle. It lives at the center of a circle and it’s been bred to salivate, primed for impatience, with a hand at its back coaxing it toward its gritty death. We could say this hand is history but this isn’t true. Vocabulary is the future we’ve all been waiting for. It lunges at the throat of man’s deepest intentions. I hear the crush of cartilage, an ankle wobble for recovery, the quick intake of breath. There is a fall but the crowd is so thick now, I cannot see. I rely on my other senses to brace myself for what’s about to happen. 

˜

Look out and look backward. The story we are living now is an ancient one. It has been lived before but feels new in this present existence. Open the books. This already happened, in different guises, on the shores of other lands, evolved forms hemorrhaging before it sprouts new wings, before the beak breaks through the surface, a new oration, legs jutting from an interior rush of nomadic longing. Hybrida’s translation: Wilderness of the mind. But it’s changing.