dragonheads grace wisteria-cloaked pagodas

their red centers beating blind, dynamite hymns in tempo

dancers with fans profess a lullaby to restless ginkgo.

from yellow skin spill guts of mango,

scraping the bamboo bones of two nations hollow,

carving them into one solitary skeleton.

i read the seaweed drifting in my miso soup like tea leaves.

you have surrendered the motherland,

unable to discern a body from your people.

a whisper, a promise, mine in clammy fingers.

if i could pray to yue lao, devout seamster of love,

entwining myself in his red thread,

my heart would kindle hollow lanterns.

but mandarin syllables glue teeth and tongue

to blackened nectar of open-oyster tapioca

and yue lao has renounced all daughters

of european blood.

a chrysanthemum to his lips, he sings:

yang-drenched girl,

resurrect the language that washed ashore.

let the mortality outlive you, and unfold

into a deathless crane of devotion.