Rundown
Funny, how none of us
married Chinese.
Sticky and runny,
all but fresh, the stir
of memory, how
younger brother has said
Stupid Asian Neighbors
too many times since he said it
just once, too young trying out
some them versus us, too young
acquiring a family
taste for self-othering, how
I was younger, even younger
than he, when the older bully
tied my shin to a high
branch and pulled, till adults
walking past heard those shouts
and did nothing, how
in tree shade suburbs
there are shades neighbors
dread and I wonder
when the tree will let go
that is larger by now
reaching closer
or dead and when
a voice
in the home
country wayside and shade
mutters something,
Chinee and White
people dem something,
to our tourist backs
in passing:—Hey:
you know they’re talking
about you and you
I make it known right away
to mother and brother,
Not Me. My own shade made
indigenous, abruptly at home.
Like so do catfish swim without
affect, through scallions, thyme,
blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call this
says mother, in a conjuring tone:
over essentials we’re to simmer
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 do that, I say.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always do as I say
not as I do. And how often is that true.
Even in history. 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, Jerome 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 the elect, this 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 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.
Sticky and runny,
all but fresh, the stir
of memory, how
younger brother has said
Stupid Asian Neighbors
too many times since he said it
just once, too young trying out
some them versus us, too young
acquiring a family
taste for self-othering, how
I was younger, even younger
than he, when the older bully
tied my shin to a high
branch and pulled, till adults
walking past heard those shouts
and did nothing, how
in tree shade suburbs
there are shades neighbors
dread and I wonder
when the tree will let go
that is larger by now
reaching closer
or dead and when
a voice
in the home
country wayside and shade
mutters something,
Chinee and White
people dem something,
to our tourist backs
in passing:—Hey:
you know they’re talking
about you and you
I make it known right away
to mother and brother,
Not Me. My own shade made
indigenous, abruptly at home.
Like so do catfish swim without
affect, through scallions, thyme,
blood-red tomatice.
Rundown, they call this
says mother, in a conjuring tone:
over essentials we’re to simmer
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 do that, I say.
The hypocrisy.
Well, Father was always do as I say
not as I do. And how often is that true.
Even in history. 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, Jerome 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 the elect, this 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 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.