For my Chukchi Chinese mother, Lin Sun Lim, 1906-2007
Koy! Here. Nien. There.
Language is the boat that delivers
memory across the ocean of time
and seasons, steady and strong
like hands that coax childbirth
Duck eggs preserved in mud with
yolks orange as permission
Village cures for night sweats
nightmares, fainting and fl atulence
among a cabal of sewing women
The Mothertongue that shamed me
now archived like Yaqui in
annotated bibliography with
footnotes and diacritics for
dialects of extinctions that
the Keepers of Tongues
copyright for publication
Koy! Here. Nien. There or year
No English spoken here
The accent’s gotta swing like
the tail of the ox pulling its cart
along the Pearl River delta
We were curios, countryfolk
who followed the crooked path
to a yoked dream called Mei Kuo
Like Ishi, frozen in time
they say we never really left China
Her thlay-yip voice is wet on my tongue
its thick, rough drawl tastes of ji-yuk beng
The tip alights on my upper palate
ascending and descending like a gull
in a cave with its wings clipped
I wait and wait in the echoing gloom
of post-mortem interrogations
nervous as the raven fl ies
A rice bin, a Temple well, emptied
A paper memory tossed at sea
This is all she’s left me
The children were laid to rest
behind locked doors with graffi ti
etched in couplets of despair
The night moon parsed its golden light
on the words, “I will cross the barrier.”
What is your name?
Where and when were you born?
How many houses in row?
Koy! Here. Nien. There.
Mother watches like a barn owl
under the drooped lid of the moon
She dreams of fi refl ies under the bridge
of capturing their fl ickering light
She dreams of wolves and seals
swimming swift and steady across
the frozen channel to survive
