father’s bamboo grove<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
those mexican kids
\nclothes pins clamped on the ears
\nto make me squeal<\/p>\n
as a tagalong
\none had to earn
\nrites of passage<\/p>\n
we sat on haunches
\ndrawing secret parts
\nof women in the dirt<\/p>\n
hidden away
\nin my father’s bamboo grove
\nthat grew back
\nafter each cut<\/p>\n
even after gravel
\ndelicate green shoots
\ndefined stones<\/p>\n
they’d laugh
\nbreak off hollow stems
\ncop hits of bamboo smoke
\nsatisfied only after
\ni’d coughed myself
\nred<\/p>\n
came end of harvest
\nthey left
\ntheir mother dead
\nafter making a tamale pie<\/p>\n
the bamboo too
\nno more
\ntrampled over
\nstill under a parking lot<\/p>\n
only leaf patterns
\ncast in tar<\/p>\n
with my fathers’s chinese restaurant
\nwe were the only ones
\nleft in town<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alan Chong Lau wrote The Buddha Bandits Down Highway 99<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Buddhahead Press) with poets Lawson Inada and Garrett Hongo. He is the author of Songs For Jadina<\/a><\/em> (Greenfield Review Press) and Blues And Greens – A Produce Worker’s Journal<\/a><\/em> (University of Hawai’i Press). As a visual artist he is represented by Francine Seders Gallery in Seattle. He continues to work in an Asian produce market in Seattle’s Chinatown\/International District neighborhood. His poetry and art appear in a forthcoming book \u00a0this fall by his sister Linda Lau Anusasananan entitled The Hakka Cookbook – Chinese Soul Food From Around The World<\/em> <\/a>(University of California Press).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" father’s bamboo grove those mexican kids clothes pins clamped on the ears to make me squeal as a tagalong one had to earn rites of passage we sat on haunches drawing secret parts of women in the dirt … Continue reading