MEDITATIONS ON HOME
Kelly
Zen-Yie
Tsai
digging
a hole to china
1.
we are at war
with ourselves
700 missiles
point
sharp noses
across the taiwan
strait
my mother
runs delicate
fingers
over plum candy,
sesame bars, dates
mashed with
walnuts
at the sweet shop
in shanghai
for the first
time in 60 years
these her
child tongue
remembers
before revolution
before exile
as she stuffs
a plastic bag
to its brim
for the 17 hour
flight back
home
to chicago
2.
the engraver
at the great wall
didn't even turn
all the way around
before he muttered,
"oh, hua qiao."
and continued to hammer
my father's name
my mother's name
my name
the day's date
into the piece of
granite before him
what kind of
people are we
to think that we
can build anything
big enough to keep
our culture intact
that we can
be impervious to
change
that we can shut
the world out?
3.
carol and i
are useless
american-born
hackney-tongued
we listen
to my father explain
why each of these
places are so important
so many poets
so many temples
so many gods
i can read only
the waving of
the lotus fields
the old women
dressed in black
reaching their
arms towards
the sun
the children walking
two by two gripped
in each other's hands
with superhero
backpacks on
4.
tiananmen square
is empty of ghosts
empty of blood
just stretches of
gray stone buildings
and packs of postcards
sold for a dollar
soldiers tread lightly
past me in green polyester pants
striped with yellow
their shoulders
marked in red
their faces
younger
than mine
we are not
so different
i realize
i press a kiss
to my crossed
fingers
untwist them
and let the kiss
ride on air
we survive
every history
in prayer
in prayer
The
Ballad Of The Maybe Gentrifier
I’m not white, but
I love me a white person’s
wireless
internet café.
I don’t wear a thrift store
grandpa
sweater,
scraggly beard, and oversized
plastic
glasses
with my skinny jeans.
I don’t expect the
neighborhood
to change around me. I don’t want it to,
but I am clearly the face of
this change.
You could hardly gather from
my eyes, my
skin,
my hair, and say this girl is
reppin’
Bed-Stuy…hard.
(Usually people guess Korean
from
Flushing.
Wrong on both counts).
This is the Bed-Stuy of
Biggie’s ghost,
boarded up brownstones with
“For Sale”
signs, plucked one by one,
puckering
into a revivified concrete
bloom.
Handwritten notes that read:
“Will buy your house for cash.
Call this number.” rolled up
and
shoved into rusty wrought iron
fences.
Rented dumpsters out front,
hammers and nails and saws,
brown bodies hang out third
story
windows for 50 dollars cash
per day,
painting the worn exteriors
of brownstones brown.
Is this life after death?
Or a parasite?
Or the green shoots of new
growth?
I walk by brick and steel and
concrete boxes towering over
the old hardware store,
even I can see the
neighborhood
is changing, and this change
is also a part of me.
Chinese Taiwanese from
Chicago, Black
from Seattle, Jamaican from
Columbus,
Pakistani
from Austin, Mexican from San
Francisco,
We are the slightly less
visible
marauders
ruffling the edges of rents
upwards
hanging out at Habana Outpost,
kicking back mojitos in the
summertime,
designer sneakers, designer
jeans,
designer
sunglasses,
(Or at least, the knock-offs.)
Will the real Bed-Stuy please
stand up?
The lifetime residents
clinging to legacy
in rent-controlled apartments,
the old
folks
hanging in clusters on the
stoop, the
families
at Marcy projects, the bodega
owners
stocking
more and more organic produce,
the
children
who went abroad and return to
family buildings
with European accents and
college
degrees, the
Bloods and the Crips, the
storefront
imams and pastors,
the hasty landlords with rings
of keys
and credit check forms
ready on clipboards in the
driver’s seats
of parked cars.
Will the real Bed-Stuy please
stand up?
The Bed-Stuy of Timothy
Stansbury and
Rashawn Brazell.
The Bed-Stuy renamed Clinton
Hill and
Stuyvesant Heights by real estate agents.
The Bed-Stuy before and after
white
flight.
The Bed-Stuy that survived the
looting
and the burning of Broadway in ’77.
The Weeksville Bed-Stuy.
The Do or Die Bed-Stuy. The Bed-Stuy and Proud of It.
The neighborhood is changing.
It is plain to see.
I
am a part of it. It is a part of me.
Kelly
Zen-Yie Tsai
is a Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based, Chinese Taiwanese American spoken
word
artist who has performed her poetry at over 400 venues worldwide
including
three seasons on "Russell Simmons Presents HBO Def Poetry." Winner of
a 2007 New York Foundation for the Arts Urban Artist Initiative Award,
she was
listed as one of Idealist in NYC's Top 40 New Yorkers Who Make Positive
Social
Change in 2008 and AngryAsianMan.com’s “30 Most Influential Asian
Americans
Under 30” in 2009. She has shared stages with Mos Def, KRS-One, Sonia
Sanchez,
Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, Amiri Baraka, and many more. (www.yellowgurl.com,
FB: Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai, Twitter:
@yellowgurlpoet).