https://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2020/poetry/rundown-jerome-ellison-murphy
Rundown
Funny, she says, how none of us
married Chinese.
Clinging and runny,
her saucepan’s reduction,
the stir of face-warming memories:
a voice from the home
country’s seaside shade, muttering
in passing, behind our backs
about tourist Chinee and White people
--Hey:
you know they’re talking
about You and You, I made it known
straightaway to brother
and mother--not Me.
My own shade of brown
abruptly claimed, as though
indigenous; and relaxed
as any catfish, afloat
sans affect, on a current
of coconut milk and oil,
scallions, thyme, blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call it
she tells me, in a conjuring tone,
over essentials we’re to simmer
for reduction. Reduction--
Funny, how none of us married Chinese.
Because it was only Chinese
Father wanted for us.
Stick to your own kind, he told us.
Well he didn’t do that, I say.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always Do as I say,
not as I do. And how often is that true,
throughout history. Just look
at Hitler, I mean how Aryan was he?
All right. But still. The hypocrisy.
(Stupid Asian Neighbors,
younger brother has said
too many times
in my head, since I heard him
just once, trying out a little
Them versus Us, too young acquiring
some taste for self-othering—)
(“Don’t let me hear you
say that again,” I laid down, as though
banging a gavel, as though
I were righteous, post-colonial, free.)
(“Yo, Jerome is, like, the blackest name ever,”
his neighborhood comrades, all white,
soon made it known.)
Let’s brown this first, okay,
before it goes in with our sauce.
(Well to the elect, it has sounded
like 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 this base with some smoked
turkey leg. Came to this country
knowing nothing about turkey legs
but, that was cheapest. You know.
Did what they had to do.
Here, so taste this: better now, isn’t it.
“Rundown.”
Yes, back home has really changed,
you won’t get that good bammy, not even
with your seafood. It’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
had a real taste of Jamaica.
But back then!
Oh you should have seen the parks.
The railways.
Man, how about those tolls we paid,
our driver said that money
wasn’t even staying in the country.
Well, I’ve heard some people say those things
were better under the British, you know.
I mean, as far as infrastructure goes.
What’s that now? White people?
No, Father 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.”
Now, we’ll have to marinate that.
You know, 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.
(Brother’s coming of age:
basic training behind.
E5 already. The roles of a tanker:
loader, gunner, commander.
When to load, where to aim
one’s sense of command, faces
of various shades will soon say.)
Here, use this knife to pry under the skin.
Pry under. Look, under.
(I was younger, even younger
than him, when the older bully
tied my shin to that high
branch and pulled, till adults
walking past heard my shouts
but did nothing)
Look, look—keep close
around the edge.
(in tree shaded suburbs
there are shades neighbors
dread and I wonder
when that tree will let me go
that is larger by now:
reaching closer:)
All right, you got it now.
(or is it finally dead)
Then chop these up for me--
no, not too fine.
(So 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
how to hunger.)
Hey, thanks for the lesson.
We wouldn’t want any
of your mastery lost.
Ain’t that the truth.
Before that happens,
really ought to write
something down.
Right. Easy now--
easy now:
you already know
how you can cut yourself
doing this.
Rundown
Funny, she says, how none of us
married Chinese.
Clinging and runny,
her saucepan’s reduction,
the stir of face-warming memories:
a voice from the home
country’s seaside shade, muttering
in passing, behind our backs
about tourist Chinee and White people
--Hey:
you know they’re talking
about You and You, I made it known
straightaway to brother
and mother--not Me.
My own shade of brown
abruptly claimed, as though
indigenous; and relaxed
as any catfish, afloat
sans affect, on a current
of coconut milk and oil,
scallions, thyme, blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call it
she tells me, in a conjuring tone,
over essentials we’re to simmer
for reduction. Reduction--
Funny, how none of us married Chinese.
Because it was only Chinese
Father wanted for us.
Stick to your own kind, he told us.
Well he didn’t do that, I say.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always Do as I say,
not as I do. And how often is that true,
throughout history. Just look
at Hitler, I mean how Aryan was he?
All right. But still. The hypocrisy.
(Stupid Asian Neighbors,
younger brother has said
too many times
in my head, since I heard him
just once, trying out a little
Them versus Us, too young acquiring
some taste for self-othering—)
(“Don’t let me hear you
say that again,” I laid down, as though
banging a gavel, as though
I were righteous, post-colonial, free.)
(“Yo, Jerome is, like, the blackest name ever,”
his neighborhood comrades, all white,
soon made it known.)
Let’s brown this first, okay,
before it goes in with our sauce.
(Well to the elect, it has sounded
like 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 this base with some smoked
turkey leg. Came to this country
knowing nothing about turkey legs
but, that was cheapest. You know.
Did what they had to do.
Here, so taste this: better now, isn’t it.
“Rundown.”
Yes, back home has really changed,
you won’t get that good bammy, not even
with your seafood. It’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
had a real taste of Jamaica.
But back then!
Oh you should have seen the parks.
The railways.
Man, how about those tolls we paid,
our driver said that money
wasn’t even staying in the country.
Well, I’ve heard some people say those things
were better under the British, you know.
I mean, as far as infrastructure goes.
What’s that now? White people?
No, Father 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.”
Now, we’ll have to marinate that.
You know, 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.
(Brother’s coming of age:
basic training behind.
E5 already. The roles of a tanker:
loader, gunner, commander.
When to load, where to aim
one’s sense of command, faces
of various shades will soon say.)
Here, use this knife to pry under the skin.
Pry under. Look, under.
(I was younger, even younger
than him, when the older bully
tied my shin to that high
branch and pulled, till adults
walking past heard my shouts
but did nothing)
Look, look—keep close
around the edge.
(in tree shaded suburbs
there are shades neighbors
dread and I wonder
when that tree will let me go
that is larger by now:
reaching closer:)
All right, you got it now.
(or is it finally dead)
Then chop these up for me--
no, not too fine.
(So 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
how to hunger.)
Hey, thanks for the lesson.
We wouldn’t want any
of your mastery lost.
Ain’t that the truth.
Before that happens,
really ought to write
something down.
Right. Easy now--
easy now:
you already know
how you can cut yourself
doing this.