i.

the poem has a beginning exactly as you’d expect it:
pa in sweatshirt, ma with purse; the funny thing is
i never used to call them those names:
“pa,”
“ma,”
always found them too cowboy-ish,
too un-me, un-like

us: who held chopsticks before dinner time and shared
stories of how grandpa came over from china.

ii. (at the dinner table)

there is no symbolism here. there has been none
for a while now. this household eats and
eats in quiet. my grandmother is a poet but their
books all burned down

back in ’45 when mao stormed into fujian and
all her uncles could eloquent on was that
“the communists were coming!”
“the communists were coming!”
and instead of poems took with them their
children, and their gold to pawn

and their clothes on their muddy
mortar-stained backs

and the japanese

iii.

my grandfather now comes twice a week to the
hospital for chemotherapy. it is a nice hospital.
good view of the cleanest part of our *****

city. there are lights and white folks now. two things
my dad said did not used to be there. they

used to be spanish. they tilled
our rice fields and spent the money on living rooms
with lots and lots of space to sleep. we on the other hand,
worked. he claims.

your grandfather and his grandfather and i

iv.

awake every sunday morning at precisely 8:30.
made to go down to the temple in kalesas
and told to fetch the office paper for
noontime reading. see we weren’t spoiled: grew

up just next to the pasig river which back in
the 70s did not smell as bad as sin only
sweatshirts

and the sweat we soaked them in we reeled along
steamed fish heads and chopsticks for picking at them with
and bowls of rice we never really ate with spoons.

v. (back at the dinner table)

i listen to my mom and dad
sweat profusely in the evening heat only we can have here
he in his sweatshirt and she
with her golden purse,

preparing to leave - a wedding party awaits -
an jacket draped over his shirt just like grandfather used to do it
in a sense,
but gripping the chopsticks delicately for all us
to see:

“pa,”
“ma,”

v.

it is not cowboys that give us our names.

at first it was a fire, eclipses, short circuits,
lightning and fireworks
the incense,  honey adventures, smokes, wines,
perfumes; then bruises and honey, fever,
fatigue, warmth, currents of liquid fire, feast
and plague then dreams, visions, candlelight,
flowers, pictures
then images out of the past, fairy tales, stories,
then pages out of a book, a poem, then laughter,
then chastity
at what moment does the knife wound sink so deep
that the flesh begins to weep with love
at first power, power, then the wound, and love,
and love and fears, and the loss of the self, and the gift,
and slavery. at first i ruled, loved less
then more, then slavery. slavery to his image,
his odor, the craving, the hunger, the thirst,
the obsession
i will wonder about this for the rest of my life
the adventures we are you and i
wonder if this is love i feel, wonder if perhaps,
it’s been lust all along

For volleyball games with our kids*

and the grit of dirt slipping through your teeth
like a pancaked hand flat on cement surface.
Ball. Court. It is a good morning and
the sunrise rises to give life to the game. This game:
ours. We run and jump and sing; old bones

made to jog its memory. Bounces the ball and we run
again. Laughing like children. Next to the children.
Leaping after them. Watch as the ball rises high
in the sky next as outstretched arms give chase
to them: its hands caked with dirt; gravel on nails
from the swept cement rock and line paint. This we

share like a communion, a church service. Young
and old, here and not here we rise and we
fall prostate next to the prayers of the net, the brush of fingertips
against fabric against rubber, each palm
of the ball a Sunday chorus stretching, congregation, religion,

swept from the sky and made to kiss ground where
the gods of our sweat and grit belong.

It is impolite to wonder
whether the hot air balloon in your
lungs have begun to deflate,
grandfather.

Whether you wish to float away.
Dad said you never feared flying -
dad said nothing about it, rather.
But I fear for you.

You are old. Older than I can ever imagine.
You are frail but for the globes rising
in your chest and stomach; they fall
with each frail breath.

Let it carry you away. Do not
let these wires hold you down. They do not
pump poison into your body. They do not
let the heat escape.

If it must, it will, grandfather. The ceased oldness
in you expanding and contracting
at will. You will not die without a fight,
grandfather. Oh you will.

we are not butterflies
wings splayed flat across tables
like specimens. we are
not fluttering in the wind
like figurines. we are
life

and love, and hope and
faith floating eternally
in the distance, just
and beneath our grasp. past
the skies we fly still,
splayed across blue
like specimens. poised
to spring to life
like figurines. we

are beautiful. we
are strong. we
are feeble, and plastered,
and nailed half-folded
to surfaces that scrape against
our cheeks but still
we fly. still

we are not butterflies.

help is in order -
you and i still screaming each other sick
like twin fathers. one

who wishes to surrender his church
to the rust and the other hastening
to restore it:
stone, metal and all.

many nights i
fail to tell apart one from the other,
tell apart the resurrection
from the ruin. i

and you both picking up and
at loose ends of temple rubble
and made to snivel at what
could have been.

there are pieces here we keep
that need be thrown away.

there are pieces here we leave behind
that need be kept.

They guard our gates. We are ruled by mechanised gods.

We are not free.
We are not real.
We are not awake.

Our mornings wake up to dew and smoke. We wake up and pick up our broomsticks and sweep.

You and I are made to sweep.
And it is through these sweeps we dance our fated dances.

Dance to wake the castles,
and water the gardens,
and venerate Emperors long dead and gone.

“This,” we say, “is our duty.”
“To belong.”

“To bow together.”
“To hope as one.”

We, all key cogs in the machinery. Everyone has a broom and dustpan. Everyone is made to sweep.

"Is this the land," we ask, "that we sang for and dreamt our feverish cartoon dreams for?"
Perhaps not. Our stories exist only in a land beyond time.

We’ve been there. It is a mechanism for the gods. They too hold brooms.

They too sleep in shrines of stone.
They too live in temples of steel.

The gold ones have long ago burned.