I
I am sick with nausea
but
I hunger for meals 
to fill my mouth with guilt
            because I do not know
how to metabolize gratitude 
served as white rice
in porcelain palms
I bring to my tongue.
I am foreigner
half-familiar with tongues
                                         home to 
                                        Mom + Dad
            who were born
            in Taishan but came to the 
                                                    United States to pull money and
                                       Mom pulled thread 
                          into fabric and fabric was pulled 
                                           onto bodies; she made clothes
and waited for Dad to come home
while Dad waited tables—     a busy
busboy
                        until 11 
                    pm, way past 6 when we ate,
                   everyone but
Dad.

Mom cooked and
home smelled like labor
wafting through the rooms,
the scent of steamed and stir-fried money:
beef and corn 
with salt beads:
Dad’s crystallized sweat
to remind us at 6 
we were eating his labor
while he lost 
family time 
shifts until 11 
but we were asleep
our stomachs full     and uneasy

II
I am sick with a fever
living between Mom        &    me 
after her words slashed 
my fresh flesh I cleanse
with saline 
tonight when
big sister Sally 
played big brother and
tattletale telephone.

Bottles of Ensure 
sat in the vast vacancy
of the kitchen and 
tonight I needed 
an (    ) bottle    
      emptied 
into the sink.
I poured $$$ down
the drain instead of
downing it
for no reason
but to have an    
empty bottle. 

Mom moves → 
past the hallway
    past the restroom
            past the closed closet door
where she picks up a metal rod
moves → 
past the bedroom door
and finds my body folded
in thirds with my head praying
to my knees.

She swings an X
and my back raises its skin
to yell but I shush
bow my tongue
saying $orry.

III
it’s been cold here
since spring of 2005
when a baby bloomed
in the belly of our mom 
who birthed and named
my sister/ chicken/ baobuoy/ a treasure 
with her skin so golden 
it harvests youth from the sun 
kept in her eyes that 
slant up towards the sky 
to smile as the new favorite.
I am a child 
five years older
forgotten five years later
after the arrival of the sun
that keeps me cold. 

IV
Coughs in my body 
         store generations of souls 
                  mapped out by my nose lips 
Taishanese loy koy:
I ask them to come be with me,
with Mom and Dad
whose mother tongues
speak the land of their first home
                                in Taishan where I am foreigner because
          I dress in cotton t-shirts from H&M
          and qipaos only on holidays 
when I eat the same food
celebrate the same harvesting    of rice and wheat
under the same moon        that heavenly ages
to a crescent shining     
on half my face.
In same sky of sim sim stars,
my ancestors hum softly in my blood
thicker than red twine knotted and burnt
around our necks to honor the zodiacs 
  we fall under
         as I wonder where my body first began.