At night, when I'm too tired
to understand and you're too awake
to sleep, you teach me Taiwanese, useless
basics. Jia pung, let's eat--
You are always hungry. I feel
your stomach beneath me
tremble. You tell me your parents
fed you the eggs of rattlesnakes
and now one grows large inside
your intestines, the rumbles I hear
the shaking of its tail.
Doshia, thank you--I hope
your father will understand
when I say this, I hope
I will say it more
than shiddei, sorry--
sorry I am not Chinese,
my American tongue even now
turning clumsy and awkward
over the word.
_____Wa, li--I, you
I pronounce and imagine everything
wrong: our wedding,
the clinking glasses of a hundred relatives,
I will transform myself from white
to red to a gown with the intricate
embroidery of a dragon, priceless
as the matador's suit of lights.
My head will bow and the mountains' fog
will shroud us with the dew
of centuries of widows' tears. We will fly
from Taipei, blessings fanning us
like paper cranes, into Nanjing.
There, children will pull at my red hair
and follow us,
_____ta shi shem-me ta shi shem-me
_____what is she what is she
You worry that our honeymoon
will end in disaster -- an accident
as we travel past the plains of Zhengzhou
and along the Yangtze river.
There will be no transfusion to save me if I bleed,
my type as rare there
as an albino--
When we reach Chengdu we watch
the women work in the fields
of rice, sopped with water,
like our brows at the wedding
after too much wine and dancing--
And the night, after the last guest has left
I will feel you, solid, beside me--
And my feet, moist and swollen from the binding
will meet yours
in the simplest kiss.
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