Rundown
Funny, how none of us
married Chinese.
How younger brother has said
Stupid Asian Neighbors
so many times in my head
since he said it:
that once
I was even younger than he
when that much bigger boy
tied my calf to a branch
and started to pull
till one neighbor heard
shouts and looked up
quickly walking past and away
that in shaded suburbs
there are shades
neighbors dread and I wonder
when that tree will let go
which must be bigger
by now reaching closer
or dead and when
a voice in the home
island wayside and shade
mutters Chinee and White people
something something
to our tourist backs in passing
Hey: you know they’re talking
about you, and you
I make it known straightaway
to mother and brother,
Not Me.
My own shade how suddenly
indigenous, at home:
like so, let this catfish swim
without affect
through scallions, thyme,
blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call this dish,
you confide, a kind of conjure
over essentials to be simmered
in successive reduction.
Isn’t it funny, how none of us
married Chinese. It was only Chinese
Father wanted for us, you know.
Stick to your own kind, he told us.
But he didn’t, I protest.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always do as I say not
as I do. And how often is that true.
Just look at Hitler,
was he Aryan at all?
Okay. But still. The hypocrisy.
(“Don’t let me ever hear you
say that again,” my brother’s
open young face
had demanded of me.)
(“Yo, Tyrone is, like, the blackest name ever,”
his white neighborhood comrades
had soon made it known.)
We’ll brown this first, okay,
before it goes in with that sauce.
(To some elect, this seemed
a name good to moan.)
These are dry, that’s why
I’m adding all this water--
you see?
Now my own Mother,
she used to flavor base with some smoked
turkey leg. Came to this country
knowing nothing about any turkey legs
but that was cheap. You know.
Did what they had to do.
Here, so taste this: better now, isn’t it.
Rundown.
Well, back home has really changed,
you won’t get that same bammy, not even
with seafood. That’s a different kind they use.
I’m so glad you and your brother
got to go, last summer,
just to see it at least. You both
got a real taste of Jamaica.
But back then.
Oh you should have seen the parks.
And the railways.
Man, how about those tolls we paid,
our driver said that money
was going out of the country.
Really some of those things
were better under the British, you know.
As far as infrastructure goes.
What’s that? White?
No, he didn’t care for them either.
Only Chinese.
Black?
Oh boy, that was something. He’d say--
“dem raise me; but me na trust dem, sah.”
First, we have to marinate that.
I never know what to do when
one of my sisters says, you really are a Chinee
Jew, just because I like to save money.
The military, I tell you, was so good
for me. Got me away,
just to see something different.
Not that I don’t love this family.
Here, use this knife to pry under the skin.
Pry under. Look, under.
Look, look. Keep close
around the edge.
(Brother’s coming of age:
basic training behind.
E4 already. The roles of a tanker:
loader, gunner, commander.
When, where, and what
to command, who can say.)
All right, you got it now.
Then chop these up for me.
Okay, not too fine.
(Then let me learn. And soon
we will eat as well as the dead:
all of those who have fed so well
they no longer know
what is hunger.)
Hey, thanks for the lesson.
Wouldn’t want any
of this mastery lost.
Ain’t that the truth.
Before that happens, ought to write
some of it down.
Easy now,
easy now.
Why cut yourself
doing this.
Funny, how none of us
married Chinese.
How younger brother has said
Stupid Asian Neighbors
so many times in my head
since he said it:
that once
I was even younger than he
when that much bigger boy
tied my calf to a branch
and started to pull
till one neighbor heard
shouts and looked up
quickly walking past and away
that in shaded suburbs
there are shades
neighbors dread and I wonder
when that tree will let go
which must be bigger
by now reaching closer
or dead and when
a voice in the home
island wayside and shade
mutters Chinee and White people
something something
to our tourist backs in passing
Hey: you know they’re talking
about you, and you
I make it known straightaway
to mother and brother,
Not Me.
My own shade how suddenly
indigenous, at home:
like so, let this catfish swim
without affect
through scallions, thyme,
blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call this dish,
you confide, a kind of conjure
over essentials to be simmered
in successive reduction.
Isn’t it funny, how none of us
married Chinese. It was only Chinese
Father wanted for us, you know.
Stick to your own kind, he told us.
But he didn’t, I protest.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always do as I say not
as I do. And how often is that true.
Just look at Hitler,
was he Aryan at all?
Okay. But still. The hypocrisy.
(“Don’t let me ever hear you
say that again,” my brother’s
open young face
had demanded of me.)
(“Yo, Tyrone is, like, the blackest name ever,”
his white neighborhood comrades
had soon made it known.)
We’ll brown this first, okay,
before it goes in with that sauce.
(To some elect, this seemed
a name good to moan.)
These are dry, that’s why
I’m adding all this water--
you see?
Now my own Mother,
she used to flavor base with some smoked
turkey leg. Came to this country
knowing nothing about any turkey legs
but that was cheap. You know.
Did what they had to do.
Here, so taste this: better now, isn’t it.
Rundown.
Well, back home has really changed,
you won’t get that same bammy, not even
with seafood. That’s a different kind they use.
I’m so glad you and your brother
got to go, last summer,
just to see it at least. You both
got a real taste of Jamaica.
But back then.
Oh you should have seen the parks.
And the railways.
Man, how about those tolls we paid,
our driver said that money
was going out of the country.
Really some of those things
were better under the British, you know.
As far as infrastructure goes.
What’s that? White?
No, he didn’t care for them either.
Only Chinese.
Black?
Oh boy, that was something. He’d say--
“dem raise me; but me na trust dem, sah.”
First, we have to marinate that.
I never know what to do when
one of my sisters says, you really are a Chinee
Jew, just because I like to save money.
The military, I tell you, was so good
for me. Got me away,
just to see something different.
Not that I don’t love this family.
Here, use this knife to pry under the skin.
Pry under. Look, under.
Look, look. Keep close
around the edge.
(Brother’s coming of age:
basic training behind.
E4 already. The roles of a tanker:
loader, gunner, commander.
When, where, and what
to command, who can say.)
All right, you got it now.
Then chop these up for me.
Okay, not too fine.
(Then let me learn. And soon
we will eat as well as the dead:
all of those who have fed so well
they no longer know
what is hunger.)
Hey, thanks for the lesson.
Wouldn’t want any
of this mastery lost.
Ain’t that the truth.
Before that happens, ought to write
some of it down.
Easy now,
easy now.
Why cut yourself
doing this.