Andy Quan

Is this somebody you could trust with your life?
Somebody you could trust? Who you'd leave your
child with? With whom you'd have a child? Who
you'd loan sugar to? Who you could learn something
from? Is this someone whose name you'd forget - after
sleeping with? Is it someone you'd trade seasons with?
Hockey cards? Secrets? With whom you'd share a
grimace and swallow a flaming sword? Who has similar
canine teeth? Someone you'd go on vacation with? Turn
your back on? Leave when they shed tears of repentance
and grace? Someone you'd call home? Someone who
reminds you of someone else? Someone to talk about?
Is this someone you could take advice from? Who you'd
take seriously? Who you'd swing by the arms and not
fear for gravity? Who considers the stars? Who eschews
maps? Who prefers solids to liquids? Is it someone who
remains tangled? A person who cried wolf? The one who
said the truth? Who ate the last biscuit? Somebody you'd
walk to? Someone worth hitchhiking for? Someone you'd
buy a ticket to? A person you'd buy passage for? Someone
who brought you back? Who gave you what you never
thought you'd have? Who polished your shoes and darned
your socks? Who never really knew you except for your
tracks in the sand? Who always thought you shady? Who
you introduced to your family? Who you'd invite to your
funeral? Who forgave you without reason? Is this someone
who depends on more than circumstance? Who left you
feeling tried? Whose habits rubbed off on you and will
never disappear? Is this somebody who could make
redemption feel like a usual state? Is this somebody?
...

we learned how
not to stand out
from insults what
not to wear

we waited for
silence to tell
us that we
were good students

though speaking
with no accent
was as easy
as water the eyes
were a little
hard to hide
...

each ninth month of the year
the buds fallen & fruit forming
copper-gold jewels a child's round cheeks

sah-lay, we call them, the sound of new seasons
two notes plucked from a song played on strings

they came to us: Chinese fruit to a Chinese family
from wartime sailboats, Captain Blueberry
guarding cuttings in his metal chest
my parents planted it like Jack's magic seed
in time, the fruit came like doubloons
* * *
we explain they are apple-
pears, I explain them like I explain myself:
like one thing, like another
but neither, you must taste it to know it

as I leave for university
the sah-lay skins are yellow and green

mother & I find two ripe small imploded moons
we peel & cut the flesh honied & crisp
the translucence is still
on my tongue when I say goodbye:

mother's efficient hug, brisk, her
small frame bony under my arms
father's soft belly & tilted head
embrace, his eyes water

reaching high altitude, I recline
pocket of impossible life amidst thousands
of miles of empty air and light
dwarf nuggets hidden in
my body turn fibrous, dissolve.
...

Don't cross your legs like a woman!

A man's right-angled knee
is what money is made of
the outer bump of the ankle
rested across the other leg
and just behind the knee
a wide triangular space
for the testicles to breathe.

A lady's pose would suffocate
the thighs engulfing each other
so bold the forward knee
so wanton the free-kicking foot
you could tip out of balance
with such missing solidity.

What happened was prophecy
I tipped over
out of my own masculinity
into schoolgirl crushes on other boys.

I also crossed my arms incorrectly
like shivering instead of defence
crossed myself profanely in church
and my eyes, when crossed,
frightened rather than amused.

When I crossed my delicate fingers
long and toothy and curved like crescent moons
I wished for the unimaginable.
...

I.
My aunt's family in California
called with the news
the day after the funeral.

Sick for six months she'd
left specific instructions
to tell us after the fact.

They'd waste their money,
she told them, to fly down here.
They believed her.

I picture the shock on father's face
eyes unable to focus
on the surrounding room.

Perhaps it was shaking
perhaps it was the endnote
of a tremor arriving from far away.

They say here on the west coast
we are due for a major quake
in the next half-century.

Buildings will crumble in ash
pavement crack like glass
we could all fall into the sea.

Somewhere, a bell rings
its resonance travels towards us.
We believe it. We do not believe it.


II.

These days I see them I forget.

Chinese school after regular lessons every day
then turns at store counter, weekends longer
or driving eighteen-wheelers full of produce.

Bear claws, when found, would mysteriously appear
wrapped in newspaper, be treasured
and transformed to precious healing soup.

Medicine of tree bark, roots, unnamed animals
tasted bitter as expectations. Or worse, as shame

All of my father's siblings: as different
from each other as a hand is to an eye
but still, brothers and sisters.

None of their old medicines saved her
and father now has lost another of his pieces
without a chance to grieve
in the style of our generation
with its caskets and processions.

As for old ways, we have no altar
in our house to burn incense for the dead
nowhere to place oranges to provide sustenance
for the long journey to the other side
or to give them sweet earthly remembrance
as they watch us from new hidden places.

As for me, fascinated by mirrors
but frightened of damage
by unforeseen circumstances
(a wall shaking, a crack that forms).

I am of no use or comfort
this would-be poet son
who has taken so few opportunities
to ask: Father
tell me about the old days.
...

After Mardi Gras
the city's largest bacchanalia
a dazzling display of breast
feather sequin sleek flesh
muscular loins and electricity
contraptions everywhere
the grit of hard labour. Now
the body unwinds like string
from a yo-yo, the mind tightens
into routine, toxins clear
skin takes in water.

Whole days when I cheated
on any lover I ever had or
will have, both in spirit
and body and unlike this city
I am incapable of hiding secrets
my words are open like the
deep blue night shedding
obscurity, a white dawn
before colour fills sky.

The rains come marking colder
seasons, the near scent of
hibernation, garish umbrellas
try to recapture glamour.
How can they?

Knowing the
rich lay down with
the poor, the lions with lambs
the drag queens meanwhile
remove their make-up and
rest the arches of their feet

this is the state of how it all
should be, a comet in the dark
joy unbounded, so what if
it's enhanced, doesn't it
show the capacity for happiness
is big as a dance hall
you arrive clean and shirtless
when you return home
in your hair, on your face
and skin:
glitter.

Sydney, Australia
...

Darren Lee and I were superstars, unafraid to swing
from the highest branch of his backyard's gnarled
apple tree, we terrorized insects, older
high-school kids, made snarky remarks about
Mrs. Kopinski in the corner house simply because
we could. We sang: Jesus Christ /
Superstar / Who in the hell do you think you are.

"What a shame," adults told us. We couldn't speak
our ancestral language. Nor could our mothers! Tell
them they've lost their heritage. What's the use anyway
of those clattery loud towers of nine tones, building
blocks flung at you in too bright colours?

Besides, we were not Bennett Ho whose mother
banned him from sex-education class, not Adrian
Tong with his rice-bowl haircut (the fringe swinging
round his head like a carousel of animals). Brian Tom
not yet into his teens expected only bad things in life
so as never to be disappointed. Not Jacob Chiu
whose Mom shaved his skull, everyone wanted to
feel its tiny combs against their fingers. Dominic
Kong was certainly not us, he told people he didn't
know Chinese but who could follow his broken
English? Definitely not Joseph Fong who stepped
in dog poop and didn't care, the playground
suddenly the Titanic sinking, passengers wailed
ABANDON SHIP!
It wasn't just that they were odd.
They were quiet boys. Not like us, nails on chalk
boards, fire drill alarms: when my voice broke
I couldn't even whisper without getting in trouble.
We reckoned their tongues got caught on the way
out of their mouths like jackets on doorknobs
as they rushed outside, their mothers calling them
back to do their homework, mind their grandmothers,
though even they'd pretend they couldn't hear
or understand whatever language shouted after them.
...

The secret connections between Chinese fathers.
Grocer, banker, mechanic, photographer, bowling
alley proprietor. Their exchanges inexact: a carton
of this season's first mangoes, a queue-jump to settle
a mortgage, a replacement muffler, professional
portraiture. Quality was scrimped only when all
agreed which corners to cut. The Spanish call it
enchufe — a socket when filled poured more
delicious currents of electricity. And flow it did
from one family to another. I tried keeping track
of Father's cronies — my map remains a crayon sketch
gone amok, the wax outlines losing shape. My own
network is unanchored and rootless. My friends stop
at random airports, fight to pay for meals. We email
and Skype. I seldom know where they live.

I grew up on Valley Drive sharing space with glass
fishing balls, an ox-blood Ming vase, a painting
of Dad's childhood home, another of teen-aged mom,
porcupine fish—inflated, dried, and hung from ceilings,
Bill Reid prints, tiny baskets from far-flung tribes.
Our names marking our bedrooms. The living room
fireplace not often used, Vancouver winters too
mild. We seldom gathered there, burnt only
wood from someone's backyard, the deconstructed
frame of a neighbour's toolshed, pinecones dipped in
a crumbling chemical the texture of icing sugar
with a tint of green food colouring. They glowed
emerald, then pumpkin orange, tiny bombs of light.

Bowling pins of fine maple burned best,
you could imagine the solid hard knocking
at the end of childhood, a perfect crack:
a punctured sphere thrown down the alley,
velocity gathering, knocking down ten stoic little men
cross-dressed in white plastic to resist
chipping and splinters, jaunty red diamonds
emblazoned on their mid-sections, a skimpy wrap.
Retired from service, they reclined in the embers.
Sensing danger in such display, I avoided
inhaling, auras bubbling off the pins, rising
in vermilion and silver heat up the chimney
the bricks climbing away, such strange kindling.
...

i.

Thirty-eight degrees. Windless. Worse on the asphalt.
Any hotter and rails would have buckled. Trains ran
slow that day. If I start with the weather, it's to pretend
it's not always with myself. Though here's my complaint:
unlike nimble Jack, I fell on the candlestick, it not only
penetrated me, but the wick is growing, twisting up
around my spine through my ribs looking for escape.
So I went to one of those dark places that most gay men
don't tell their straight friends about, pounded the maze's
corridors, and forgot the sun outside. Sisyphus trod
up and down; our punishment is circular, chasing one
another's tails. At last, someone turned around. He had
the most un-gay hair I'd ever seen. Poofs are coiffed
with product, or shaved short, but his thick ruddy
coils high on his scalp, almost hid the rest of him.
I couldn't coax him into a cubicle. He'd been inside
for hours and was spent. But I sank my hand into
those burnt red cords and pulled him like an anchor
to my mouth, and we kissed, clanging against
the lockers and groping each other. The wick emerged
from my right ear and was lit by his crimson hair.



ii.

The next day I felt lifted and light
and forced to notice I was something
called happy, which made me realize
I hadn't been the whole month before.
I'd thought what I needed was some
rumpy-pumpy, hip-swinging action
to stop me thinking. But sex mixed
with desperation or compromise
can make things worse. A kiss was
enough. On my cycle home from work
I saw strings of shoes laced together
and thrown over telephone wires, a man
playing soccer with his mutt, two men
in the middle of a sidewalk trying to
put socks on a girl. A spent jacaranda
flower fell from a high branch. I rode
towards it, let it hit me in the face.
...