Threnody, 立秋, and: Calques for the Passing of the High Season: from: archipelago

Abstract

Threnody, 立秋, and: Calques for the Passing of the High Seasonfrom: archipelago Heather H. Yeung (bio) A flash of insight suspended in a liquid blue Today was a yat hauh 女女, your father saysit is also 鬼門開; we had fun with the radicals; it is worth waiting to start anything new;the cabbages are hearting (would you believe it, after 3 years trying and in such a dry year) (my mam messaging to let me know it is officially autumn), soI start menstruating; start this poem; the moon will be newtomorrow which means the cycle is as anticipated; fires ravagethe grain or the pine trees and the white horses of the world oceanrun wild, gulls wheel foundationless. I know these things meanthat on this day strange liminalities will exert themselves. I do not usually dream. The telephone rings in another countryor another room and I cannot move to help you stopthe ringing I know you are there because the ringtone is familiar I know we are before ’97 because the international ringtone is familiar, familiar too the smell of the southerly monsoon season in 香港仔 against which all other strong smells cower and recede, I know2I always wish to stay in this season whose richnesses overpower my own where we can take umbrellas to the streets, riot in the puddles, this somewhere impossible The apartment is not big enough for such movements and has shrunkin time. I am standing and my toe catches a snag in the bedsiderug, so I know I am not real here or know because of the weathertoday we stay inside where there is the smell of hot rice and frying and on the countertop sits a macaque eating a peanut butter sandwich. I know the macaque is not me as here I have no tongue and know it is a peanut butter sandwich because it catches in my throat [End Page 57] you pad into the kitchen, speak my name in the versionrarely heard nowadays (all tones right) tell me to get off the damnedcountertop, finish the sandwich, stop fooling around Your brother visited with your 侄仔 who is a cheeky monkey 甩繩馬騮! your father and I are compiling a list of ‘spoken only’ phrases At what moment have I been monkey, monster, untethered horse, wereyou alive? When did red stain this conversation and the firesstart and how can we be sure today is a day of thresholds? Parched, I veer toward the bathroom, catch toein inevitable rug, cannot distinguish 媽媽 from 嫲嫲with the mirror all steamed up with the pressure built insidemy tongueless dream-ears, tone-deaf to this momentin which your eye cannot sound the differencebetween characters a part of me asks how is it then that we have passed dissident sensibilities through generations if you could not read what my 爺爺 had printed (or perhaps that is exactly how such things are passed) and the ghostsof inescapable soap operas on the cathode-ray TVwail messages, deafen with the cliché patterning of truthin the sound of a backalley printshop, the smellof soon-to-be-burned inkpressed pamphlets, the secrecyand flight, pragmatic exile, impossibility of return. on our 10 o’clock news I was shocked by the beauty of the images of the wildfires in the Mediterranean and by my reaction that it was beauty I saw or was it terror [End Page 58] I know I will never choke more than a tourist’s nicetiesin knotted mandarin, will fall back on things too ancientto know and flinch at the sense stripped from each ‘simplified’ ‘character’ I meetand flinch when the friendly academician at a collegial supper where we eat light spiced tagine only with our right hands Englishes to me ‘Chinese’ as a single nation and language tells me to go home and look up my origins to understand but cannot hear the difference between whitemaa and maa and maa andalthough I know I cannot sound the names of the poets rightI hear in the lilt of tones that are not mine the condescension of something torn from its roots...