First Year In The Maple Land Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A Tanka Sequence


'it's flight not fright,
you're flawed not a fraud...'
the teacher
tries to put a zipper
on my Chinese mouth

'I used to be...'
cut off in the middle
by her last look
stabbing me
into silence

I walk jumbled ground
above the bones
of Gold Mountain men...
searching for the pieces
of a broken dream

winter rain
speckles attic windows
the ghostly past
knocking on the door
of my immigrant mind


Note: After gold was found in the Sierra Nevada in 1848, thousands upon thousands of Chinese began to travel to the West in search of gold and riches. Gold Mountain, the Chinese version of the Promised Land, is historically used broadly to refer to western regions of North America.