Flag of the Earth
//Cross these borders of
man-made faultlines etched in soil//
(May I speak your language)
© Alicia Khoo
NaPoWriMo Day 18
Immigrants
I Am Willing
Yearning burns
and anxiety swallows me whole;
I look out the golden cage,
at the mud or at stars–
it is a decision I must make,
an act of the will.
Like the girl whose boyfriend lied
and sold her to a brothel in
Amsterdam;
Too ashamed to go home,
scared of his violence
and too hooked on smack,
she finds a picture of herself at
nine years old,
in every public toilet in the city,
her father’s handwriting
in purple ink on the back:
“We know what happened and we don’t care.
I miss you. Please come home.”
When we hear the sound of keys,
only prisoners rejoice.
© Alicia Khoo
NaPoWriMo Day 29
We are not for sale.
On Forgiveness
I find forgiveness to be such an overused and worn out word. It has been said to be one of the expressions of love and kindness–some say the way of being perfected. If mercy means to not mete out the punishment deserved (justice), and forgiveness means to release someone from the debt (condemnation) that stems from the wrong done to your personhood (the boundaries of your mind, will, emotions, body, loved ones) or property, I think perhaps from now on I will say, “I release you from everything you have ever done, including humiliation, deceit and betrayal. You owe me nothing, no less, no longer.”
And if grace (unmerited favor) means to not only forgive (release), but to do good to them (Christ-like), then Christ help us all! I’m running on empty with grace.
I think practicing forgiveness might be all I can muster right now. Let’s not push it.
-AK
Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.
- Samuel Johnson (a/k/a Dr. Johnson) (“The Great Cham of Literature”)
Absorbed
No worries about tomorrow,
In a flower smelled today.
Capitalism is an Interesting Creature
In my armchair sits Philosophy
Regal in rags
Holding a cup of poison
Next to a perpetual fireplace
As the great thinkers of mankind
line the halls
Frantically writing shelves of books,
Arguing about whether God is dead,
Impotent! (a collective gasp!)
Indifferent?
A figment of the imagination?
A moral judge who decrees that men and
children die for Him;
Or a moral judge who died for all?
Wisdom says I have to make my choice,
And if I choose to make no choice,
That is a choice in itself.
We discuss the pursuits of utopia,
How we threw Communism away,
(so many people trying to change the world):
States of Monarchy, Anarchy and Apathy;
the nature of humanity–
inherently good, or completely fallen,
Heading to maximum entropy
Or eternal paradise!
Are the wages a tool for freedom,
Protection and a common good,
Or are we just prostitutes to gold
And dust?
Traitor of my soul,
You traded me for thirty silver coins,
my brother.
Cut me out of the inheritance;
If I am to guard a den of robbers,
if truth be told, I am to inherit destruction;
You can have it all.
I throw my willpower in the fireplace.
I drink the cup of poison.
I fall asleep weeping, wailing and
mourning in a garden but don’t die.
© Alicia Khoo
NaPoWriMo Day 28
Adventures in Springtime
Composed 5/2/13
Description: Another stunning day. Wrote this in my head on my way back from lunch with my mother. It was only after I had written it and decided how to format it that I discovered it was almost a perfect haiku (all I had to do was take out the "it's"). Guess I'm just in a haiku state of mind these days.
Excerpt #2 from Novella: The Inimitable Livers
Image © Isabelle Barciulli
Justine’s father tells me why Koreans use metal chopsticks. He says during the war, all you had was scrap metal and grains of rice, so Koreans made their chopsticks in such a way that you could pick up a single grain of rice. The Korean War, what really lies behind the slogan Freedom is not Free. He says they are descendants of Genghis Khan, because they were born with a bruise-like birthmark that fades after birth. Warriors, nomads, fearless, irreverent.
“We could legally adopt her,” Justine says over breakfast. She’s a close friend of my mother’s and visited us once during Christmas. We’re having waffles, Grandpa is having homemade kimchee with rice and instant miso soup. Her husband peers over the paper, eyebrows raised. He smiles at me, that big wide smile like sunshine and pearls.
“Violet, could you give us some privacy?” He winks at me through black-rimmed glasses.
As they argue, I walk to the bedroom they had prepared for me. “We already have three, Justine,” I hear him say. I feel bad, like an intruder—Megan and Sarah have to share a room now that I am here. I have been washing my own underwear and I throw them into a Ralph’s plastic bag. My things are still in the backpack and I haul it on.
I’m not sure why New Yorkers hate Los Angeles. When Justine takes me down the coast, all I see are mountains and the Pacific Ocean, to the west is Asia, to the east is New York, London. Once, a guy on Venice Beach told me to smile and I tried, but it made me too vulnerable, naked. A bible thumper came up to me and told me I was going to hell. He was convinced of his belief and desperately wanted to help me. I spent half an hour listening to his personal experience of rebirth and how it is his mission now to spread the good news. I told him this is hell, and if he would leave me alone I might be an inch closer to Paradise.
I remember standing on the top of the Rockefeller Center with Mom, and she pointed out Los Angeles to me, saying it would always be home.
Now that I am here, all I want is to bottle that blue.
Solstice Canyon. 7pm. Jazz in the trees bouncing off the cliff walls.
I step back into the kitchen with my backpack, and Justine glares at her husband.
“Put that away,” she says to me. “We’re going out. Eat your waffles first.”
I tell them I have to go to Paris.
“But you’re only 16!” She folds her arms. “All alone in Paris?”
Khari puts down his cell phone, sits forward, hands clenched together. “Just, she has a French passport. She’s French. She’ll be alright. It’s what her mother would have wanted.”
She erupts into a monologue about five year plans, did I not want to go to school, there was plenty of room at their house, did they upset me in any way, they could get me a scholarship with my credits at LaGuardia, music lessons, Ivy League, and all they could offer, the whole time waving that wooden spatula.
Finally she sits down, exhausted.
“We’ll get you your ticket to Paris,” she takes my hands in hers. “But V, always remember this. You want to be just like your mother, I know that, except she was very strategic. She may have seemed spontaneous and adventurous, but the majority of her life was planned.”
I adjust my backpack. “And look where she ended up.”
Justine looks like she just got slapped, and Khari bursts out laughing.
“Damn girl, you got spunk.” He gets up and puts a hand on my shoulder. “She’ll be fine. She’s coping too. Let her go.” Then he realizes his wife looks like she’s about to pour iced tea down his shirt. He clears his throat and scatches his head, “Ahem, sorry I laughed.”
I look in my notepad, it says under “Paris”:
Euros, go to the Indian restaurant on Pico and Westwood, look for Aziz.
Aziz runs an overpriced Indian restaurant on Pico and Westwood called The White Elephant. It must be euphemistic considering the operations behind the restaurant. I show up and everyone in there seems to be blonde. I know I will never eat there. My mother always told me that Americans, referring to WASPS, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, had their tastebuds scrubbed off by Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes the moment they were born. She only went into restaurants where there were Asians.
The male maître d’ greets us quizzingly, we don’t look like we are here for food. I look too solemn, like I’m in mourning or a brooding philosopher.
The smells, spices. It all rushes back to me. I remember New Delhi, water from copper pans, eating with our hands, the slums of Mumbai, my laughter streaming from trains as I ran from carriage to carriage with kids from Norway, Australia, England, their parents snoring in cabins after curries, seared salmon with Hollandaise, chips and afternoon tea. My mother was usually deep in discussion with locals discussing why Sikhs wear turbans or why Indian people sold gold in Singapore and mosquito nets in Cambodia; the impact of British colonization and the effects of imperialism on religion, the caste system, poverty, politics.
I ask Khari if we can eat here. We are ushered in and seated by Guarav, his gold-plated name tag says. A server looms over me in his white starchy colonial uniform, gold lacing his sleeves as he pours water into glasses. I ask Guarav for Aziz as he is about to walk away. He stops in his tracks, a smile frozen on his face.
He comes back and stands next to me, crouching lower and still smiling. I hear easy flutters of conversation and champagne flutes tinkling, silverware hitting porcelain. The light is stark white in here, too white.
He lowers his voice. “And may I ask why you are looking for Aziz, Miss?”
“Is he here?” I insist, I hate it when people answer questions with a question. Khari speaks up, “Sorry, she’s from New York. Do you happen to know Adela Lee?”
“Let me make a phone call.” He gestures for a server to take our order and briskly escapes into the kitchen.
We get lamb korma and butter chicken to share, with steamed basmati rice and two glasses of mango lassi. Guarav comes back and says Aziz is in Dubai, on his way to Paris. He has heard the heartbreaking news about my mother, and he will send for me at Charles de Gaulle. Guarav hands me the necessary details on an envelope filled with euros and I thank him. Then he gives me a rose for his condolences, tells me I am pretty and to be careful in Paris. For the first time, Khari looks like he doesn’t know what to say. I blush a little and tuck the receipt into my journal. As we eat, we start discussing plans for Paris.
Right now, all I know to do is run. If I stand still, I’m not sure I won’t start drowning.
© Alicia Khoo
The Inimitable Livers
Written in Bangkok, Thailand
August 2012
Excerpt #1 from Novella: The Inimitable Livers
The studio is small, a shoebox in St Mark’s. On one wall lines an exposed hanging wardrobe, our clothes hanging in no particular order. Aunt Joanna’s on the phone and her purse zipper keeps getting caught as she paces up and down from the bed to bathroom that is clogged with shoes and underwear. I get her some water from the fridge and she mutters thanks and asks how we ever lived here for ten years. I reply that we used to live in a bigger apartment in Queens but Manhattan was just closer to work for Mom and most of my friends lived here or in Brooklyn. I didn’t have that many friends in Queens even though I went to LaGuardia. While she is standing in the apartment still on the phone, I look at the notepad again. It has names and cities and addresses, in sequence. The first one says Justine Kim-Scott, Los Angeles. That’s whom Aunt J has been on the phone with. The next one below says Paris, and another bunch of names. There’s Rome, Holland, Turkey, Greece, Macau, and a list of names next to the cities, mostly people I have never met.
At the bottom it says in her sharp handwriting,
Violet, you are bigger than the world.
The world could not contain me.
Do not be wherever you don’t want to be.
This is war and you must fight.
If you do not know why you are here,
Seek out people who can teach you.
And if you must die, do not apologize.
You will be returned to the stars.
I had found her face up on the bed next to me, I am guessing she had hoped to leave with some sort of dignity, like the photos of Khmer prisoners we saw at the high school museum in Phnom Penh, stoicism in the face of impending doom.
I am told to pack just the essentials, but I want to pack her long vintage pea coats that we bought in Brooklyn, the old Canon A1 camera without the lens cap that she barely used but I took everywhere. I want to rub my face against her satin dresses and wear the heels I will soon fully fit into. I want to pack her bottles of perfume, carry all her books of poetry, my photography she hung in frames.
Aunt J promises me that all will be in storage; that I will come back to New York soon to collect the things, and she finally relents and lets me pick some stuff to bring with. I take a photo she took of a homeless guy sleeping on empty cans of beer, someone had sprayed graffiti all over him. I take a red satin dress she wore for someone else’s wedding, and the old camera. I agonize over my vinyl player and which book to put in my purse, but eventually pick a collection of her poems— on the cover is a crude painting of Plath she had got me to paint with fingers when I was ten, at the 92nd Street Y, with a crown of words that state: “You Are Ungovernable.”
I leave the vinyl player behind.
© Alicia Khoo
The Inimitable Livers
Written in Bangkok, Thailand
August 2012
