after Jacqueline Rose / after Chen Chen

she fed me 

clothed me

kept me

safe albeit

in excess

five layers

in spite of 

subtropical 

winter heat

so much to

eat I needed

digestive pills

to ward off

the stomach’s 

sharp protest

how not to

utter the un- 

grateful thing: 

that I am 

irrevocably

her object

that the

poet who 

wrote this

saved my life: 

Sometimes, 

parents &

children

become

the most

common of 

strangers 

Eventually,

a street 

appears

where they 

can meet 

again

How I

wished

that street

would appear

I kept trying

to make her 

proud of my 

acumen for 

language

these words

have not

been for

nothing

I wrote

to find

the street 

where we

might meet

again & now

there is relief

guilt or blame

but they are 

nearly always 

misplaced

you are born 

into the slip-

stream of

your mother’s 

unconscious

if someone

had told her

that the last 

thing a young 

mother needs

is false decency

courage & cheer 

she might not 

have hurt us

both but what

to do with 

remorse &

love that comes 

unbidden like a 

generous rain

how to accept

her care after

the storm is there

a point at which

the mother is 

redeemed the

child forgiven

can the origin

story be re-told

transfigured into

the version where

the garden is always 

paradise & no one 

need ever fall

out of grace

In the invitation, I tell them for the seventeenth time
(the fourth in writing), that I am gay.

In the invitation, I include a picture of my boyfriend
& write, You’ve met him two times. But this time,

you will ask him things other than can you pass the
whatever. You will ask him

about him. You will enjoy dinner. You will be
enjoyable. Please RSVP.

They RSVP. They come.
They sit at the table & ask my boyfriend

the first of the conversation starters I slip them
upon arrival: How is work going?

I’m like the kid in Home Alone, orchestrating
every movement of a proper family, as if a pair

of scary yet deeply incompetent burglars
is watching from the outside.

My boyfriend responds in his chipper way.
I pass my father a bowl of fish ball soup—So comforting,

isn’t it? My mother smiles her best
Sitting with Her Son’s Boyfriend

Who Is a Boy Smile. I smile my Hurray for Doing
a Little Better Smile.

Everyone eats soup.
Then, my mother turns

to me, whispers in Mandarin, Is he coming with you
for Thanksgiving? My good friend is & she wouldn’t like

this. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, pulling
on the string that makes my cardboard mother

more motherly, except she is
not cardboard, she is

already, exceedingly my mother. Waiting
for my answer.

While my father opens up
a Boston Globe, when the invitation

clearly stated: No security
blankets. I’m like the kid

in Home Alone, except the home
is my apartment, & I’m much older, & not alone,

& not the one who needs
to learn, has to—Remind me

what’s in that recipe again, my boyfriend says
to my mother, as though they have always, easily

talked. As though no one has told him
many times, what a nonlinear slapstick meets

slasher flick meets psychological
pit he is now co-starring in.

Remind me, he says
to our family.