Telling the Truth
BY JINGYU LI
Don’t get me wrong, I had a fist too and wielded it.
Once or more than once, I started the fights, a word sword or a
sword sword. I put my earbuds in, pretended not to hear my father
yelling in the car. He ripped them out, his voice grew to the size of a car. Once
or more than once, my anger was bigger than his anger. I punched
my father in the thigh as he drove. He smashed my face, harder, one hand
on the wheel, threatened to crash the car. Neither of us liked to be beat.
I would not believe his strength no matter how many times he showed it to me.
Tell the story without beauty, someone said. For years I refused to listen
to Anne Sexton’s therapy tapes. I am respecting her privacy. Her daughter wrote,
in justifying the decision to release them, her culpability is part of her
poetics. What was I afraid of? I was not a kind child. I wanted often
to be the stronger animal. Once my father embarrassed me in the free
pizza line, overeager, drawing so many eyes upon us, the eyes of college students
who wanted free pizza but not like we did. I could feel their eyes and they made
me hate my father. He slapped me for my ungratefulness. We were alike
in this way, friendless, something to be looked at. And how we hated that. For years
no one saw us cry. My mother thought I was heartless when my brother weeped
for the dead and orphaned dinosaurs and I stood watching. Inside,
I tamed a rock. When the neighbor boy put his arms around my stomach and lifted
me in jest, I swung the tennis racket I was holding into his head. The worst part
was the looking up, the tears at the edge of the eye when my parents
beat me in front of his parents. Say it like you mean it. He might have to go
to the hospital. Did I feel sorry for anyone but myself?
And Other Predators
BY JINGYU LI
I wanted to put barrettes in my hair, sprinkles of sun
in the clouds, but my hair was so thin they would slip out
& on a Sunday we dipped ourselves in the same ingredients
Isn’t it something
when we see a beautiful thing we can’t help shouting
“look!”
I only turned away for a moment —
I will show you my unserious side so that you love me
Here is my curved back my loose hands
my feet that trip over every stone
the toy mouse I loved made of rabbit fur —
The universe deals out its punishments
with a sense of humor not an eye for an eye
but a knife to rip the hide off
for a sweet thing to hold —
In the tall room in Florence the soprano’s lilt
floats high & deep
where I stood with Ma
in the green & gold
glass & we saw little resemblance how I thought
I might crush her the way I towered over
like Ba my long arms my wide shoulders
the mouth
I could not control
I said
I will eat fewer chickens I will raise
a rabbit & a kitten I will feed the kitten a chicken
I will contemplate my sins again
In the midsummer light, Ma separates sesame seeds
from sand with a wooden pick she squints
at the opera singer on her screen it is hard to see clearly
in black & white & 1959 but they touch
in that garden we know
She is pretending to be a man
to save a man & is saved by a woman
She marries the man but everyone’s favorite part
is the middle
when she could still get away with it all
I tell Brother I don’t know
how to tell time the sun still looks the same
as it did that fall when we shoveled leaves
into pumpkin bags & filled
the house with bats sweet piles of spice & the smell of rainclouds
I hide you seek
I say, as I watch him look for me
