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splinterswerve
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
splinterswerve.hotmail.com
by Dale Lee Kwong
This poem was written on the theme, "Heating Up" for the 2008 CBC (Calgary) Poetry Face-off. Check this link for an audio link of the poem in April 2008 and a chance to vote for the national winner. http://www.cbc.ca/poetryfaceoff/
I – Another Mother
The mystery... of my history
began long before the day
my father revealed:
I was adopted at birth.
Long before I wondered
the connection to my worth.
He said there is no shame.
He was blessed for me to take his name.My birth mother....
She was more than a vessel.
More than a womb
where I swam in a sea of misconception.
She gave my heart its first beat.
Poured her blood into my body.
She is my history.
Knows the answers to my ancestry.
What time was I born? How long the labour?
Who cut the umbilical cord?
Or are we still attached?
Did she hold me to her breast after my first breath?
Or, did she hide from me... the face she gave to me?
And why did she give me away?
II – Gum Sahn GenesisIn the beginning... long before my birth... young men left China
seeking Gum Sahn, Gold Mountain, in Canada. Dreams of Gum Sahn....
The young men became houseboys, ranch hands, gold miners. Their sweat
fell in sawmills and canning factories. The railroad. Dreams of Gum Sahn...The reward? Dominion Day, 1923, the Canadian government made the Chinese
“permanent aliens”. Exclusion from voting and citizenship. Their families barred
from immigration. Dreams of Gum Sahn...Separated, they wrote letters to their wives and children in China.
The “bachelor men” of Chinatowns. Sleeping 8 to a room. Working...
Aging... Dreaming.... Gum Sahn Dreams..... GONE!
III – Revelations
My birth mother told me – “You were conceived in a rape.”
My life began in a moment of violence.
Inside a nest of cinnamon sticks
under a moonless midnight
or the back of a mahjong parlor.
A Dragon-Man, dark and faceless
forces himself upon my mother, birth mother.
Tears dignity from her torso
Smothers her spirit
Rips her heart... from her soul
Thunder and lightning camouflage her cries.
His fiery breath incinerates.
Stars shatter the sky.
Gods of heaven and earth collide.He screams... ejaculates... demands, “Comfort me, woman. Comfort!”
Gum Sahn, GONE......The heat burns.
I am volcano.
Lava bubbles hiss and moan.
Lava bubbles hiss and moan.
Flames red and orange and black
Ignite the cinnamon sticks.
And from the embers
my Phoenix rises.
Scorching the earth... at my birth.
Comfort women – euphemism for women forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during World War II.
The Chinese Exclusion Act – a federal law passed on Dominion Day, 1923, which essentially stopped all Chinese immigration to Canada from 1923 to 1947.
Dragon – Chinese believe they are descendents of the dragon.
Phoenix – A mythical bird that at the end of its life-cycle builds a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites. Both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises – a symbol of fire, divinity and immortality.