}} Intergenerational |

Poetry at Sangam

SangamHouse

 










Intergenerational

If, like the saying goes, it’s that we’re lovers
in the previous life that makes us father
and son in this one, perhaps I didn’t love you
enough. When you gave a few push
on mama to give me manhood by giving
me a prostate, you also gave me a natal chart
and some bones to break in the year of fire.
Then you sold your yellow Beetle, told
me yellow is a homophone of your last name
and mine. There’s no gold. Maybe I feet
head no good (brought bad luck). Still, you gave
me a surface to be licked by teenage tongues
then I knew it’s called skin. You gave
me a face I couldn’t revert effortlessly enough
to avoid mistakes. That night you found
my prostate supplements and my needs,
I wanted to ask about how much the Beetle
repair would have cost. I’m used to waking often
enough with the desire to repair my bladder.
So many nights I went back to bed and heard
you open your bedroom door to do what
I just did. I forgot how you parented
yourself. I should decide for you. You didn’t
ask about my grades or my life, I named
your representation for you. I called it Self
-Portrait as Typos, then I knew I might
not be any different. At Immigration,
I clarified that people like us had last names
first and first names last. Inheritance wasn’t
truly linear if I experienced what you did
but was unspoken. I gathered as many balls
of socks from home and hoped your feet
would be warmed in hospital. I heard
you say please in bed and I found requests
not pleasurable to make and remake.
You left your beans on the plate as if to
contemplate on the history of beans.
I liked you said lei ah yeah (your grandpa)
not to make a familial reference, but to curse.
No good my lungs lei ah yeah, you said.
Then I remembered virus in cartoons always
looked irregular. Curses were an immodest
form of childhood; you used it at your own
risk. Then you cleared your phlegm cleared
your phlegm cleared your phlegm. You still
didn’t ask about the men I brought home,
so I didn’t tell you I was sisterly polyphagic.
TV said K Pop was happy virus and the males
got pregnant in the seahorse world. So much
phlegm bloating in your lungs. You took
your pills when I watched animal programs
and learned that representation was hierarchical.
Ugly fish was often accompanied by oriental
music, while dolphins swam in an ocean
of orchestra. It’s Bark (Bach, you meant).
Then you cleared your phlegm cleared it
and it, when I took my supplements. Bodies
of inheritance. We didn’t dance. Our organs
did. You asked me why I pulled out tissues
from a paper box as if from the center of you.

 
The poem first appeared in Grist.