Red East
This is my father performing tai chi,
hair hit
By silver circles through canopies of
moon-lit
Pine trees, swift and sharp, an impromptu
ant
Migration. The hands move with winds, slant
In East and West, mystical planes
intersecting.
He used to be a painter, with brave
strokes attracting
Black chicks with eleven well-placed dots
Of his sable brush, the imperfect circle
blots
Onto soft paper, taking shape, and
becoming
Alive.
Until the Red Guards broke in drumming.
A counter-revolutionary, they sent him to
Dalian
With an old abacus, to count the kilos of
oat bran.
In autumn, they made him slap his hands
in the air,
“Shake the trees to rouse the sparrows,
scare
The vermin eating all the rice in the
granaries.”
He watched intently as they flew from
trees to trees,
Awakened from sleep by rattles of willow
branches.
He laughed as their tired bodies fell,
appendages
Flapping in momentary unison before they
crash
In impossible angles, amazed at how clean
the flesh
On the backs of their wings were. Soon, locusts invaded
The fields and devoured the green in
sight, this negated
The need for granaries. So they made him read the Red
Book.
Wave the Red Book. Yet he didn’t
drop dead
Like the hungry piano teacher who gorged
on dried
Yams and bowls of wintermelon soup. But he cried.