Orientation: A Chapbook

The Catlin Gabel School Senior Poetry Writing class final projects.

2022 CGS Senior Poetry Chapbooks

At twelve, amidst the seats, I watch upon the stage The hymns, chorales, cantatas of the Hualien choir And listen, nodding, smiling, understanding none. The laziest composer would recoil at songs Containing just four tones. Yet my own family’s choir Performs them. (For the record, my song? It has one.) See, Mandarin is a song, an epic melody First sung five thousand years ago; now, by this choir. My (English) vocal training’s hardly yet begun. The tones are easy-but words stumble off the edge Of my clumsy foreigner’s tongue. Not like the choir Whose language flows like holy light from fifty suns. What son forgets his mother tongue and fatherland? I read Pinyin-is that how I can join the choir? Too late; the cultural string has been unwound, undone. The concert ends; one-thirty, and I go backstage And there it is, the tribe of Ho, in its entire “So good to see you!” “You’re so tall!” exclaims the choir, Sweet platitudes, I’m sure–true kindness meant by none.

I remember the boat, complaining in loud squeaks as my uncle’s lowered head brushed against its ceiling; the ceiling of wood and woven straw in alternating strips, each one seven layers deep before moving on to the next; all swinging slowly, from side to side, as the motors, spinning in their double ostinato, pushed us onto the rippling green water. “Sit,” my mother told me, as I knelt on a cushion on the floor, counting the details in the ceiling to distract myself. Eleven-year-olds could sit instead of kneeling; etiquette was for grown-ups. We dug into plates of fish, arranged like flowers on black and red plates, and bowls of shining white rice, pure and crystalline, exotic yet faintly familiar. I remember passing by a tree of steel reaching into the sky, and bridges built of electronic rainbows; the sun sinking into the waters of the Edo River, the last small pieces of daylight giving way to the music of night; the chorus of salarymen exiting subway stations, the basso continuo of car after endless car on the streets. My sister sang of letting it go, and I sang of joyous rooms without roofs; and our parents applauded as the karaoke machine accompanied our strange, digital barcarolle.

Atlanta, Georgia. March 16th, 2021. Robert Aaron Long entered the spa with his gun and opened fire. The targets were the Asian women who worked at the spa. He killed six. Eventually the police found him. He took it on the chin. Does anyone remember Vincent Chin? Surely it hasn’t been too long since that happened. A baseball bat, six times to the skull (perhaps a gun was too quick for him?) and that woman, his fiancee, sees him cremated on the fire of hate, when the Chrysler workers got fired and wouldn’t distinguish between Nihon and Ch’in. And now Vincent is joined by the women from the spa. They shake pallid, white hands. There’s a long pause, as the last echoes of the gunshot reach the ears that cannot hear them. Half past six the radio blares in my mother’s car. “-They say his sex addiction may have been a factor in-” Please set my ears on fire. I’ve heard enough stories about the man with the gun. As if he had a really bad day. The radio host keeps his chin up, of course. Oblivious to his own job: stringing me along, making me think about anything but those women.

I still can’t remember the names of the women who died that night. All six escape my mind. But Robert Long is there. He just burns, a white-hot fire in the pit of my chest, stroking his chin and smiling. His legacy holds me at the point of a gun. To those failed activists–the Asian action heroes with their big guns and big explosions, helpless women in their arms, the politicians up to their chin in meetings and compromises–I say nothing. Six soprano voices whisper in my head, stoking the bright yellow fire of revolution. Huh. What a shame it took that long. You’ve held it there for so long, pressed against my forehead. The gun. Even now, you fear what I’ll do without it. But in the name of those six women I forget restraint. I forget moderation. I raise my chin, and your world erupts in fire.

Almost a Song For My Homeland 6 Barcarola alla Japonica 7 To America 8 Scenes from a Taiwanese-American Kitchen 10 Breakfast 10 Lunch 11 Dinner 12 Acknowledgements 13

Dinner Open sesame oil. Measure one cup, then one of soy sauce, one of rice wine. So goes the making of san-bei-ji “Translator, traitor,” said the Italians. Maybe that’s me now, cooking with soy sauce that’s actually Japanese Or with sesame oil that’s actually Japanese too Or with rice wine we replaced with sake--okay, that’s too far. What the hell happened to my Taiwanese food? Last step: the tang-hun noodles, never in the recipe book (family innovation). So we sit–with our plates, our bowls, our sticks of wood in our hands– we sit down for the food of whatever made-up nation this kitchen belongs to.

(Three-cup chicken, in English. It's clumsy.) Ironic. but that’s inevitable, they stopped importing the Taiwanese one. but that’s the good brand, and sesame oil isn’t culture-specific anyway. I dunno.

This book would be impossible without the help of a great number of people, some of whom are named here: Danielle Frandina, my writing tutor throughout all of high school (to whom this book is dedicated). You deserve so much more than one book for helping me survive the last four years, but it's a start, I guess. Maurice Ravel, for writing the masterpiece of piano music that is Gaspard de la Nuit, and thus introducing me to the poem "Ondine." My entire Honors Writing Poetry class, who helped me revise all of these poems. Cliff Mason, my 9th grade Human Crossroads teacher, who is not Taiwanese, but nonetheless made me question my own ideas of race, culture and identity, all for the better. Last, but certainly not least, my family members: my mother, a pianist, a chef, and too many other things to list; my father, a member of the Shuiche Family Choir based in Hualien (a real choir, not just a metaphor for my poor Mandarin skills!); and my grandmother, maker of so, so, so much Taiwanese food. Thanks, Marcus Ho

Sheet music paper

Breakfast The pan hisses and crackles, the oil pops as– (oh not again-- “You’re doing it wrong!” says my sister, of course) –the crisp cong-you-bing flips over and onto the plate. “Cut it in fourths. No, eighths.” Fine. Sixths it is. Crunchy and salty and sweet, my sister’s complaints vanish away in waves of green onions and soy sauce. Pancakes for breakfast. Except the pancakes are Taiwanese.

Lunch Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Words I almost want to say about Taiwanese ba-ke. Bok choy and sliced bamboo shoot, Starch of the potato’s root, Flesh of pig, mixed with fish cake, In the caldron boil and bake, Served with vinegar black as night, Slurp up one delicious bite.

For Danielle Frandina, who made me into a writer. Or perhaps showed me that I already was.

orient&nbsp;|&nbsp;ˈôrēˌənt&nbsp;| 1. v. find&nbsp;one's position&nbsp;in relation to&nbsp;new and strange&nbsp;surroundings. 2. n. (the Orient)&nbsp;the&nbsp;countries of Asia, especially eastern Asia. -New Oxford American Dictionary

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