Buzzing Poems

The Crab Gatherers

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Naturally, you would think
there is a point to all this jousting,
how sea and sky rush to fuse at dusk.
The crab gatherers are quick to mark
that instance of oneness when salt and vapor
condense into night, for this is when
the nocturnal harvest begins.
A silent battle ensues as crabs try
to scurry away from fingers of light
clutching at them, breaking barrier of water,
concealment of sand.
There is method to this mayhem,
how the tangle of shells and seaweed
part to reveal an army intent on escape.
The grab gatherers are not invincible either.
In the blackness the tide eases furtively in,
reclaiming lost territory like a spurned lover,
lapping furiously at the ankles and hands.
Unwearied and deaf to reason, she lulls
the unwary to linger, a few steps more,
an hour, maybe two, and soon enough
her waves obscure the path to shore.
But the crab gatherers are wise folk,
They know there is rhythm to the rite—
tomorrow there is always another ebb of tide.
When the waters reach the knees all bets
are off, the crabs float away to obscurity,
and the gas-light fingers simply let go.
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Sea Rain

The memory of rain falling,
drenching the thatched roof of a solitary hut
on an island somewhere tugs at my heart.
How I miss the cold damp wet feel
of rain on my skin,
few pleasures are as keen
as remembering how sinning
was best done under rain

susurrant, a consenting throb
that drowns out pain, protest, or both.
Torrent of tide and sky meeting
allows us mortals to sink into smallness
lost in the consistency of sand,
the yawning anonymity of the sea

on an island where fear
no longer rises with the stain
of sunrise on the horizon.
Blind to beauty, my yearning
is to hold skin swept of scent by rain
reduced to remembering only sensation,
tang of salt and creep of cold into bone.

Surfeit of tears, I bury
my changed face shivering
in shallow water, plunging
deep into froth of foam,
dreaming of seaweed, damp hands
waving you home.
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The Sway of My Belly

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How strange to be back
in any room with you, stranger
of many years counting. Drifters
in a crowded country,
we hold each other as we will
layers of fiction to fall away.
We rely on truth in our attempt
to keep decay at bay.

I do not know anymore what draws
you to me. Youth? Not likely.
I gave up on that theory
long ago, when alone I woke up
to crabbiness and ill humor.
Quite simply, it must be stupor,
those last few licks of alcohol,
the languid, careless flicks of ash
onto the linoleum floor.

Must we be forever defined
by what we lack? When I turn away
from you I do not miss the hollow
that clefts your back.
Distance, in bed or out of it,
does not daunt me,
and anyway dawn always comes
for us too swiftly, too swiftly.

I know the pull of the temporary,
so I wanted for you to own this time,
to steal it wholly, without regard for me.
I wave the sway of my belly,
hoping to help you decide
But being man, you merely turned,
nestled at my shoulder,
and cried, cried, cried.

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Women I Know

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I know women that seem
meant to be broken.

You see it in
that brittle bend to the spine
and in the fine
network of translucent veins
begging disruption.
I know women whose delicately-angled faces
demand a stark purpling,
eagerly responding
to the enhancement wrought
by the blush of blood,
the pale-blue bruise tint,
the tattoo of an angry fingerprint.
I know women whose days
unravel most gracefully
to the sway
of exact slaps and solid wall contact
the crisp thwack
of skin on skin
that delirious giving in to sin.
I know women that seem
mean to be broken.
I know women.

And I know men.
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Ninth Life

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Ah, that foolhardy cat in that instant frozen
pinned by a pair of headlights bright,
perhaps the thoughts flit
in that waft of rubber before it,
“Shoot, there goes the ninth one!”
the game over and nobody’s won.

No more playing Dare That Driver.
No more last fast sprint to safety on the other side.

The breath coming fast, painfully caught,
the furry throat thin and taut
and in the humid, gas-vapor night,
resounds a terrible meowing, the sight
of felines as they mock and mourn
one sibling dead, and now it’s someone else’s turn.

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Replicating Ants

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Ants mark time grain by grain,
keepers of a household
immune to instances of assault,

where harvests do not
celebrate the plentiful,
but mark collective survival.

All contribution crucial.

Along the honeyed trail
everything amounts to gain.
Processions of grain, grain, grain

mark the sloping climb to storage
paths curved around stone
passage of secrets drone to drone,

forever leading home.

For this marriage to live
let us be like these ants, stop
making mountains from molehills:

no broken plates in the kitchen
no melodrama in the pantry
no screams that dig up history

but refuse resolution.

We must ferry the dead and the living
with a seasoned laborer’s tact
and the coiled strength of our backs,

keep careful score of sour harvests,
trudge up, up, up the hill of dissolution
work furiously under a darkening moon.

Ants defy replication.
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Toy Store Shooting

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At Toys ‘R Us I run my fingers
through displays of shiny model cars, cement mixers,
wooden trains, action-figures, laser swords—
wishing I could buy up everything in sight
to delight a sun-browned little boy
back home whom I hope would
want his mama more than any western toy.

From the corner of the next aisle the barrel
of a plastic gun pokes out and points with
unwavering precision at me. Sights homing in,
adjusting only a few degrees left, so sure
was the young soldier of its target.
Bam. Gung-ho blond boy comes out and says,
“You’re dead, chink.”

Shaken to the core but in full command
of my faculties, not bleeding, not enveloped
by gunpowder I blink slowly to look at him.
Smiling, he lowers the gun to shorts level
as a cart comes in from the corner.
His dad chuckling, “Hey you didn’t get the lady,
look she’s still standing.”

Indeed I am, dwarfed by shelves crammed
with serene Yodas, green fistfuls of The Hulk
and re-issues of E.T., middle finger extended.
All is not right in toy land today. Was I a tempting target
because here in this country of big bones
I’m considered petite or is it because I’m Asian
and we have been sitting ducks for years?

No matter. Guns and carts and bald, big-bellied daddies
who tell their sons, “Shoot shoot shoot,
we are not afraid, we will triumph!” cannot stop me.
In the combat zone of the aisle I face them,
the little blond fascist and his Gap-shirted daddy
who just took a pay cut because his company now
out sources talent from the Philippines, India, Japan,

or wherever else people are smaller,
darker, faster, smarter, poorer,
but have a full head of shiny ebony hair.
A soft voice and a wisp of a smile help
to home in the blow, “You know, in my country
just for fun, I would have pointed that barrel at you too.”
Only it would have been a real gun.

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Paperweight

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Your careless words,
trapped like busy red ants in amber
can no longer inflame me.
At best, they catch the light
and break it into random patterns
frozen pretty to the eye.
Caught in the midst of flight
they scurry across a width of table,
weighing down a stack of old papers.
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Beer Buzz

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This gauze of sky over the bluegrass
thins to cigarette foil
and suddenly I am one of four
at a table in a German bar
that stocks in excess of 400 beers
culled from all over the world.

Buzzed to the gills
I gaze in dismay at the split sausages
curried with carbon from the grill.
The yeast will rise inside me,
if nothing else will.
I long to smash all those fingerprinted
bottles over my head
to see if I would miss you less.

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Published in All Things Girl,  February-March 2005

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Crossline

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Buoyed by transatlantic
courage and the distant static
my sister drops off a birthday gift
for our mother, recently retired
and happy to have gone on tending pale orchids,
that she has fled to the lower depths
of cold, cold Canada with a lover
kind like father but five years younger than she.

Half-awake ad not yet in full command
of my own wits, I am called in to minister.
Older than me, this sister who skinned knees
and terrified neighborhood bullies
with her fierce, manic owl’s glare.
“You should know better,” I say across the hum.
She clutches the phone tighter
then rewards me with a rebuke.

Our grandmother cries a bit
and then attempts a smile to put us all at ease.
“We cannot be responsible for other people’s lives
all the time, sometimes we have to sever ties
and leave our fate to the kindness of strangers.”
I bow my head and sit quietly,
relieved that someone else is kind enough
to do my crying for me.
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