My father kills birds with slingshots and stones
before my father becomes a father. The feathers,
slick kniving strokes, the beak, a black inkstone. He offers
the lettering brush body, soaked, to his brother,
not knowing the English word for raven but knowing
it makes good meat. Here, there is a different
kind of sun—sun that cannot sop up the mud pools,
sun that settles for haze. Here, in this mix of
gravel and water and dirt, his brother is still alive.
Still treating him to fermented milk drinks,
clinking the cold ceramic bottles against the mesh
tables, metal skeletons, in brittle harmony.
Still pointing out places to watch for thorny vines as they
pass roaming chickens and carts of watermelon
on their way to burn joss paper at their grandfather’s grave.
Still hanging spider webs across cypress branches
to catch cicadas before it rains. In the silk, the wings tremble,
like spin tops being released from their strings,
the same circles and games of childhood finding space
in my father’s writing and rewriting and rewriting
of today. It’s all in the brown paper envelopes he keeps
in his bedroom desk drawer, where the orange light
from the fountain lake behind the window flickers
every time water makes its way back to water,
finding my father at night: here now, transcribing
his brother’s correspondence, scrawled
handwriting, characters no longer recognizable, two
inkblots waiting to be deciphered.
(Patricia Liu)