the poker cards from the blue ballroom
opposite to this roosting retail store
called Three Goods – 三好商店
hatching back into a stuffy, orange hotel
on that New Year’s Eve
—— An old man asks for a change
yellow teeth specked with silver fillings
breath the silhouette of
grandfather’s smoked beard ——
I heard grandfather’s二胡
melodies sipping on spring’s blood
The Butterfly Lovers
cushioning those copper fireworks
that trod hickeys on cruel snowflakes
branching like
emerald glasses
who pierced his fingers
I see me throwing cherry bombs
at the peeling sycamore
peering through the rusty spokes of a bicycle
near his store
My parents asked me why I hold
chopsticks in the wrong way
like my grandfather
who crushed his knuckles
cutting glass for a living
who carved icy coins from glass
now nesting in my pencil case
who had cancer gyrating on
the blueprints of his lungs
whose beret hat smelled like the moss
on the瓦of grandmother’s chicken coop
whose music doesn’t speak of English
but of the tenseless callus on his fingers
whose death lost to three gods:
sweaty gloves, trills of 徵, and a hand holding sparklers.
————————
三好商店 – Three Good Store
二胡 – a Chinese instrument
瓦 – a distinct kind of roof tile
徵 – a pitch indexed by the traditional Chinese musical system, equivalent to G