Missing Portrait

 

Who has seen the portrait of my mother

taken when she was twenty?

It was taped to the studio window in Shanghai,

put up without permission to attract business

sometime in the late sixties, when my mother

discovered that even beauty for her

could be possible.

 

The image forgave the incorrect colours,

(the shirt actually yellow, not green,

lips flesh-toned, not harlot red).

It probably wished to be left alone

staring out at the street.

The image didn’t appreciate

my aunts, barging in,

their demands for it back.

To have to witness what was to come:

marriage, motherhood, life.

 

What part of you stayed?

The pin-up,

the glassed-off stranger,

the bittersweet briefing with fame.

 

 

Where My Mouth Came From

 

As a child,

my grandma would pinch my lips together

and we all knew

nothing would help –

my mouth was full like my father’s,

my nose blunt like his –

these curvy quirks working against

my mother’s fine, tapered chin.

 

It’s an old mouth.

Travelled, polyglot,

and from a photo,

I discover that it’s a hand-me-down

from my grandfather.

 

But I’ve owned it all my life,

mastered its uses

in ways impossible for my father

or his father to learn.

 

This mouth,

its salt,

its nectar dribble

and ample sound,

its points and prickles.

 

It can bend,

flip a person across the street

off his wheelchair.

I’ve heard it make you moan

in cries so urgent

they break your knees.

 

My mouth,

untwisted from between finger and thumb.

Irreverent and indelible.

Its set of teeth.

Its morning-glory sheen.

 

 

Red Rice Soup

 

This month’s blood is over

and my aunt is at the stove

hovering over the pot.

 

She’s making soup

to replace the blood,

a ruddy thick brew of

black rice,

Chinese dates,

dragon eyes,

red beans.

 

A red flow,

I’ve stained the white tub.

I always compared it to death,

a tireless crimson descent

but I never die.

 

Red mends blood, she tells me.

A bowl of white china.

A tip of scarlet at the end of my spoon.