Xī’ān Nocturne with Jasmine and Pears
I call my mother to tell her about a rare dream
in the first language:
the fruit vendor’s miniature green pears
the soft juice I crave
she pays but gets the wrong change
and I realize she can’t read the words
on the cardboard sign and doesn’t know
how much she is owed
she reminds me that the word for pear
sounds the same as the word for leave
梨 (lí) and 离 (lí)
you’re telling me I paid too great a price
to leave, she says
inflected differently, 莉 (lì) is jasmine
my mother’s namesake
how do I tell her that a week earlier, leaving
my grandparents’ home, an ambush of jasmine
stopped me on the sidewalk—small mouths
muted with grime yet still sweet as a rain-
dipped stone
I plucked one
tucked its velvet trumpet behind my ear
now half a world away
my mouth empties:
every word sounds the same
Demolished Landscape with Open Mouth
for a friend, whose name, whose
face I no longer remember
when I was a child my family lived
in a building six stories tall
and a field of wild grasses grew in front
and in the field was a well with a heavy iron lid
that one day opened, left agape
so in the field there came to be a mouth
with a long throat full of rain, the husks
of crickets and yellow dust, tiny bodies
the rain overpowered and when the wind blew
the mouth hollowed with sound
in the field you and I played with our fingers
pointed into guns, our elbows and knees
patched in the loose camouflage of dirt
we climbed my father’s red motorcycle
ticking as it cooled by the tall grass
here we rushed and tumbled
straining against the other as if to break
through to another life
and the mouth in the field opened
waiting for you to find it
