Bloodlines
My mother lies belly down
against the bed,
her back is bare,
her arms thrown up
alongside
her head—
a body
in surrender.
I pour
eucalyptus oil
into the crease
of her spine.
With a quarter,
I scrape, press down,
bruise the skin,
pink, then red,
then purple. Good, she says.
That’s poison drawn out.
When I dig in,
the bloodlines emerge,
rib from spine,
each line a bone,
each bone
a story.
I excavate
the war, a seizure,
my older sister
buried somewhere
in the motherland,
where she lies,
a curled seed, still
waiting to grow.
Talk
for my brother
The New York rain
keeps me inside.
Remember Hong Kong,
how dense the air,
how hard to breathe
inside buildings
of blue-green glass?
Here, the rain sounds
like paper tearing,
then crumpled.
How do I find my way back
to your fridge, always stocked
with Gatorade?
Today, did you call
just to talk? It seemed
we had nothing to say.
You are a coat
I want to turn inside-out
to see where the silk frays,
in the arms, along the back,
your massive shoulders.
When did you get so big?
There’s a picture of us.
I was four. I held you in my lap.
You were half my size,
so heavy, even then.
We used to stay up talking
across the room.
I read books by lamplight.
You turned away
when you wanted to sleep,
your radio by your ear,
a song by Aaliyah,
in my dream, repeating,
Come back to me.
Cathy Linh Che was born in Los Angeles in 1980. Her parents immigrated to America in 1976, after spending a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines. A graduate from New York University's MFA program, she is a current Kundiman fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and from Poets & Writers, Inc. Her current projects include: collecting for an anthology of writing by children of the Vietnam War and editing Paperbag: an online journal of the arts, which can be found at www.paperbagazine.com.
My mother lies belly down
against the bed,
her back is bare,
her arms thrown up
alongside
her head—
a body
in surrender.
I pour
eucalyptus oil
into the crease
of her spine.
With a quarter,
I scrape, press down,
bruise the skin,
pink, then red,
then purple. Good, she says.
That’s poison drawn out.
When I dig in,
the bloodlines emerge,
rib from spine,
each line a bone,
each bone
a story.
I excavate
the war, a seizure,
my older sister
buried somewhere
in the motherland,
where she lies,
a curled seed, still
waiting to grow.
Talk
for my brother
The New York rain
keeps me inside.
Remember Hong Kong,
how dense the air,
how hard to breathe
inside buildings
of blue-green glass?
Here, the rain sounds
like paper tearing,
then crumpled.
How do I find my way back
to your fridge, always stocked
with Gatorade?
Today, did you call
just to talk? It seemed
we had nothing to say.
You are a coat
I want to turn inside-out
to see where the silk frays,
in the arms, along the back,
your massive shoulders.
When did you get so big?
There’s a picture of us.
I was four. I held you in my lap.
You were half my size,
so heavy, even then.
We used to stay up talking
across the room.
I read books by lamplight.
You turned away
when you wanted to sleep,
your radio by your ear,
a song by Aaliyah,
in my dream, repeating,
Come back to me.
Cathy Linh Che was born in Los Angeles in 1980. Her parents immigrated to America in 1976, after spending a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines. A graduate from New York University's MFA program, she is a current Kundiman fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and from Poets & Writers, Inc. Her current projects include: collecting for an anthology of writing by children of the Vietnam War and editing Paperbag: an online journal of the arts, which can be found at www.paperbagazine.com.
