I.
Somewhere in a mailroom in China
is my acceptance letter to
Brown University,
fluttering in the
sticky, smog-filled wind like an
unspoken birthright,
vacuum sealed in some shoddy warehouse,
slap-banged next to my father's
porcelain wares and flasks – and my grandfather's,
and his father's. "Son,"
my father tells me,
"you've got a lot of the old man in you.
"I am grateful."
I then retch
in the dingy comfort
of our hotel room bath
before proceeding to lunch.
Dad's Chinese counterparts
congratulate me on
being able to tell them what I
want to do when I grow up.
"Wo yao dang yi ge shangren – zhu fu."
“I want to become a businessman – get rich.”
II.
"Wo xuyao xiezuo."
“I must write.”
TS Eliot once asked me,
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
I do not know yet,
but I think I have found fragments
of an answer lodged in
hotel bathrooms,
a Tianhe-bound overpass
on the way to Beijing Street,
heirloom warehouses,
And two Canton fairs.
"To get rich is glorious,"
Deng Xiaoping once said.
But I glance at
My father and mother,
And theirs,
And wonder if all their life, they have but
knocked on the doors of their fate -
chased dreams not
tobacco stewed or gold-ground
by the teeth of an Other.
As to answer your question, T.S Eliot:
Maybe, if just to find where I truly belong.
