Most of my poems are tombstones
and so my notebook is a graveyard, where stories are buried,
after the bodies that made them, have already found their place in soil.

But with you Vickie,
it’s different. Your body was found 2 months ago, and still
you haven’t been laid to rest.

There is the custody battle; there are denials
and assertions. Accusations and details in the paper
about the lines we could have traced across your tattoos:
Marilyn Monroe, Playboy bunny, the name of your son
who died just months before you.

The gossip tv shows love to make you a punchline,
a parody of yourself disguised as mourning:
How drugs broke up your first marriage, how they
made you skinny again, and killed you in the end.

They use your stage name to persuade us not to change the channel:
find out what Anna Nicole did the night before she died,
after these words
Just another joke that you’re not in on. The world can laugh from the safety
of their own bruised egos.
like there she goes, making a fool of herself,
even after death.

Your mistakes are well documented, so much so,
that everyone is qualified to pass judgment,
speculate on who’s responsible for your death, and your life
about how bad a mother you must have been,
about how you were a slut, and a gold digger,
and that’s the price of fame when you sell yourself like that
and they forget that nobody gets through life untouched.
that all of us have made bad choices,
trusted the devious
acted on the wrong impulses
we just didn’t do it naked in front of a camera,
not in front of men fantasizing they might one day
meet us under the right situation to seduce us into bed.
Not in front of thousands of pre-teen boys with their hands down their pants.

I told you most of my poems were tombstones
and so it is with this.
You deserve a peaceful spot in the ground
as much as anyone.
While the rest of the world wants to pretend you’re alive
So they can keep pointing and laughing,
I’m laying you to rest, in hopes that one day,
everybody who says they loved you
will do the same.

copyright Giles Li, 2007

1.
he sees you when you’re sleeping
he knows when you’re awake
he knows if you’ve been bad or good

Santa sounds a lot like John Ashcroft’s wet dream. Pardon me if I don’t feel comfortable with the fact I’m being surveilled by a man who’s supposed to bring joy and Christmas cheer to the world, when he’s judging bad and good by his own standards. Who knows how fucked up they might be?

I guess I get a lump of coal for being such a grinch. But there is no mention of whether president Bush gets a lump of coal for causing the deaths of over 15,000 people. Or I guess he doesn’t have to worry about getting coal since he and his buddies now control most of the world’s oil reserves anyway. Sorry, I’m off track . . .

How can there be happy little songs about this guy? Watching us day and night shouldn’t we be writing horror stories instead of Christmas carols?

2.
if you encourage your kids to believe in santa claus, you’re setting them up for a life of believing in anything. like the easter bunny, or the tooth fairy, or that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, or that we can trade liberty for security, or that torture is a responsible method of intelligence gathering, or that capitalism is inherently more fair than socialism, or that painkiller addiction is somehow better than crack addiction.
How many times must we lie to our children before it’s no longer acceptable? How many times must our government lie to us?

3.
when I was a kid, my family would go to some holiday celebration every year for Chinese folks somewhere in the outer suburbs. And every year, a guy dressed as santa claus would burst through the door and give gifts to all the children. and every year it would make me embarrassed because everyone knows santa is NOT Chinese.
What kind of process was at work in my head that I was ashamed of my own people? What made me feel a santa claus “of color” was more fake than a white one. (maaaaaan…they’re all equally fake.)

This year, my girlfriend’s 3-year-old nephew had no interest in the black santa doll in the store, only the white one. I wonder what other preferences he’ll have growing up.

4.
it’s supposed to be a cute little secret that we’re all in on: tell the kids the boxes under the tree are from santa, but they’re really from their parents. And the more presents they get, the better they must have been over the past year, even tho we all know that more presents means richer family.

But that’s part of the fun of keeping the secret , the rich kids get to feel good about themselves, and the kids from working class families…well, they’re parents are forced to either buy presents they can’t afford or to let their children believe that kids who already have everything, have it because they deserve it. And the kids who don’t have nothing are bad anyway.

But it’s just a cute little secret…

5.
when my father was a kid growing up in China, a guy dressed as santa visited the village. As the children gathered around, he regaled them with stories of his travels, to England to talk to Churchill, to America to advise Roosevelt, to Russia to meet with Stalin. And my 9-year-old future dad thought to himself:

“oh man, nobody would lie about that, this guy must be real.”

Santa Claus as international diplomat.

6.
when my girlfriend was a 6-year-old refugee in Utica, santa didn’t visit her house. At school, they told the children that santa would be coming thru the chimney on Christmas eve, but living in the projects, she had no chimney.

So she left the front door unlocked before sleeping and woke to find no presents, because her parents, working 5 jobs between them didn’t know shit about Christmas. But instead, she silently blamed her mother for locking the door.

Imagine being 6, and thinking you missed Christmas again because Santa can’t bother with people who have to lock their doors.

7.
if I was Christian, boooy, I’d be pissed off like a mug. That the birth of my savior is celebrated by pretending a fat white man breaks into people’s apartments and leaves shit there.

Merry Christmas.

copyright Giles Li, 2003

Bob Hope died yesterday
and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but it seems fitting
because hope died yesterday for me as well.

Hope died for Sheng Hao Tang
when he was beaten to death at the corner of Tamworth and Boylston
on his way home to Beach St
after morning qi gong on the Common.

Hope died for this 70-year-old man
when he drew his last breath as the victim of a mugging
robbed for a handful of dollar bills.
the same money he and his wife used to raise 5 children
money from his years as a chef in China
and working at a flour factory in Boston.
money that would have bought dan tat and haw flakes for his grandchildren.

Hope died on the front page of this morning’s newspaper
as staffwriters jostled for space with department store ads
to relay their memories of the late, great, 100-year-old comedian
while news of Mr. Tang’s death
was relegated to an article about the city’s recent increase in violent crime,
proof positive that hope died for many
a long time ago.

Hope died for Tony On on Independence Day
at Bayside when he was stabbed to death
while watching fireworks explode infinitely overhead.
Newspapers speculated about his gang affiliation,
because he was from Dorchester,
because he was Vietnamese,
because there are never easy answers after the killing of a high school student
who never made the paper before.
No staffwriters wrote three-inch-wide columns about Tony’s life.
No staffwriters even cared that he was dead,
just like they never cared about him when he was alive.

Hope died for Kai Leigh Harriet
when she was paralyzed from the neck down
by a stray bullet
while playing with sunlight on her porch.
And while newspapers did devote space to this 3-year-old girl
who survived a shooting,
none of them wondered why a 3-year-old girl
shouldn’t be able to play on her porch,
or why people feel the need to carry guns in the first place,
or why there has never been a serious effort
by the powers that be
to get guns off the streets.

So as newspapers trip over each other,
trying to pay tribute to him,
and President Bush makes a press statement about the life
of this great man
Bob Hope,
I will continue to listen to the silence
as tribute from the rest of us.
For Sheng Hao Tang
For Tony On.
For Kai Leigh Harriet.
For all the lives ended and altered by violence
who never got their fair space in the newspaper.

Bob Hope died yesterday
and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but it seems fitting
because the rest of us are still struggling so hard
to keep hope alive.

copyright Giles Li, 2003

stabbed to death on July 11, 2004 in South Boston

The sky is getting darker.
We’re losing our stars one at a time
to streets that don’t hear prayers
and calls to stop the violence.

Our sons are dying in the city scenes they call home
as their mothers send breakfast-time chants in their direction,
keeping them safe until streetlights come clean
to serve as makeshift guardian angels.
A generation disappearing before its light has a chance
to shine through,
etch its shadow in our minds,
decorate our night sky with spirits
we can remember without having to try.

A generation disappearing, begging for blessings
from anyone who might have them to give.

It’s harder to notice stars from the city
because lights from the ground
make them harder to see.
Another one of our stars has fallen to the ground,
and all we can do is keep our heads up,
eyes toward the heavens,
and wish there was an answer that
would keep our night sky from falling,
falling,
trying to lull us back to sleep.

But it’s hard to find sleep tonight,
because looking into the sky,
we know another one of our stars was taken
before his time.

copyright Giles Li, 2004

I find life at Costco,
my red white & blue membership card buying my way
into a world of overturned books,
limited produce, and
light bulbs as far as the world goes.

My Costco card makes sense of a world
a building, a feeling. Costco, the mythical land of bargains.
My card serves as a key,
winning me entry into the castle
of expansive parking lots and oversized shopping carts.

This parody of America.
I can’t buy one cantaloupe, but I can buy three.
I can’t buy a hot dog, but I can buy a foot-long.
Vitamin D comes in bottles large enough
to cure jaundice and baby shampoo containers
double as bath tubs.

Costco is my piece of America.
A country so full of foolish pride that the money
that should be spent on healthcare and textbooks
is instead spent on oversized American flags
and flightsuits for the president to play make believe.

That’s the America that I hate.
That’s the Costco that I love.

At my next visit, I’ll purchase a mirror
and force myself to look in it every day.

copyright Giles Li, 2004

My generation is that of Asian performers
trying to understand their parents
through music and song, not conversation.

This is about my parents, or the sketches of my parents I draw on stage.
And we all do the same,
raised to express our unique individuality
by phrase-long descriptions. Parents
reduced to cliché. The quick stares
and hands when we misbehaved. The superstitions
that stemmed from times when rice, sanity, everything was more scarce,
except superstitions. The toothbrush
and bottle of hairdye in the kitchen because
while her face says early 40s, the white hair
gives her away.

We all have variations on the
same theme, and if you lived only in poetry,
you would believe we all had the same father
and mother.

And if I lived only in poetry, we all
would be brothers and sisters in a more
literal sense than we’re used to.

But this isn’t about us, this is about my parents.

We’re writing each others parental poems
over and over. All we change is the opening line
like:

my father lived one ocean and 3 heartbeats away
in the next room

like

my mother used the light of daybreak
as warpaint

and even though it never gets old, it never
gets new either. And we share family photo
albums simply by mentioning them.

Of course they always have their own stories.
But even they seem familiar somehow.

When my father was a kid, he boiled his hat to kill the lice, and

My mother decided against marrying the first man who proposed
and moved to Canada instead, and

My dad spent five years in prison, and when he got out,
he was still younger than I am now, and

Because my mom lost all her possessions when she fled,
now she’s morally opposed to throwing anything away -
even coupons that expired last year, just in case

she can trick a cashier into taking it.

This is about my parents,

but this is not about my parents. This is about two people.
Two people who found their way to each other
too late in life to have three kids. About
the two people who split a small pizza on their
first date, the couple who saw “The Godfather”
every time out because he couldn’t fathom doing anything else.

And when he proposed after three months,
she said, “No.
I barely know you.”
and he said – on one knee,
“OK, then ask me. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

While cleaning up around the apartment,
I found a stamp collector’s book from my mother’s childhood
in Hong Kong. Stamps from Turkey, Nigeria,
Uruguay. I wonder where her imagination took her then, and
I wonder if it ever took her to where she is now.

To my mother, the stamp collection means almost nothing,
but to me it’s everything, because it’s the thing she loved
before she didn’t have options,
when her imagination could still take her wherever she wanted to go.

When my father visited the village where he grew up
40 years after he left, his mother told him
he was able to get to America because his ancestors were buried in peaceful soil.
He dismissed it as poor countryfolk mythology.

His family, without formal education, and
what would his mother think if she were still here,
that her American grandson writes poetry for a living?
I want to write the poem that will save the world, but I still don’t know
what kind of soil will cradle my body when I die.

My parents clawed their way to a real life
just for the possibility of one day providing opportunities to children
they might never have.

This is not about my parents, this is about the two people
who were dreamers like me once.
And those dreams didn’t include me, my sister, or each other.

And what can I do for them
besides write poetry
that says the things I can’t say,
tells the stories I can’t tell,
stories I don’t even know are real.
Maybe they’re fact, or maybe embellished,
or maybe my own false memories
of past lives.
Stories I’ve never heard
but still know the endings because they
all end in the same place:

here. The present.
With two children, a daughter and a son who writes poetry.
A daughter and a son
who are grown, but have the luxury
of never growing up.
And them, my parents, who will have to wait
before they ever have a chance to live their childhoods.

copyright Giles Li, 2004

Dear Cha:

Only half of your picture appears.

Arms crossed, eyes straight forward,
I can see refugee in the lines
where your eyebrows come closest.

Today I ate two lunches, decided not to visit the gym.
Let the stress of work hold me back;
felt this two cups of coffee twitch
stall between my wrists and my fingertips.
Noticed a scratch on my wedding band, too deep
to buff away, still trying with my thumb.

I met you on my computer screen, I’m sure
your body only rests as peacefully
as your loved ones thoughts
allow it to. Your wife says, you were very aware
of your lack of English skills.
That you couldn’t have started the fight
that dropped you to the snowy floor of Wisconsin woods.
Wouldn’t have known where to start, or even
that you were being insulted.

I managed to secure a couple thousand in funding yesterday
for my programs. Today, purchased some equipment
that set us back about that much. Wore sneakers
and a hat because it’s Friday. Marveled at the quality
of my iPod shuffled playlist during my commute;
so bad that I wanted to e-mail my wife,
tell her I heard two of her favorite songs
before I hit Arlington station.

In your picture, your 5 children,
are not to be found. Your wife, now widow
younger than I am, wraps her arms around your chest.
Her face is out of frame too, and all i saw
of you came from behind the bent iron in your eyes.
Where you took English classes, were learning to hunt
small game, adapting to the planet’s opposite conditions
to the heat you left only two years ago.

Maybe Cha, we could have been friends
down the line. Maybe we could have been strangers
on the same bus. Maybe you could have flashed highbeams at me
on the freeway, encouraging me to put more weight in my foot.

Most likely, we would never have crossed paths,
and so maybe this letter
from a stranger means nothing.

But maybe this sadness over your death
pulls the heavy air a little bit off your family
a thousand miles away and on the other side of the world.

And maybe grieving helps heal other wounds. Maybe.

Sending my love to you and your loved ones.

Your friend,
Giles

copyright Giles Li, 2007

The mousetrap snapped to life while we slept.
We know this because the paper bag has moved
into the corner of the kitchen
and the tip of his tail peers out at us.
It has been your habit to set up traps in paper bags
so you can throw away their bodies without having to look.

This time the bag lacks the crisp edges
we have come to associate with death: wrinkled, worn,
softer to the touch than than the top of your grandfather’s head.
These bags are more for you, not them. Anything
so you feel less guilty; take comfort
in knowing that his final moments
were spent in exploration, not fear.

We had come to know him you thought. Never catching a glimpse,
but I heard him scramble inside the walls and vent;
I flailed at his shadows with unraveled coat hangers, sent threats
his direction,
punched holes in the drywall
as though intimidation worked both ways.

You said you didn’t want him dead, only to leave our house.
When you cried, I said I only wanted to protect you;
and in your dreams, you wanted somehow to believe I could.

You speak to his carcass
softly; sharing revelations and confessions you still keep from me.
From the inside, you can hide what you want to hide,
and so it was a fitting tribute. Secrets die with their owners,
and this mouse takes his and yours
to a dumpster in Central Square.

copyright Giles Li, 2007

Your ease of step and untrembling hand,
caught between versions of my shadow,
have rendered me useless.
There are pens that have no means of expression,
sheets of paper hunger for touch
          to the point of aching.
You have made me a poet who hates words.
                    (I have no use for them.)
The language in which I love you
lacks form to gain definition. Unpronounceable by sound.
Only by fingers drawn out by the sun,
          living blades of grass.
Only by lips grown sweet as peeled lychee fruit,
          broken until tasted.
Only by breath that remembers its beginnings,
          believing in its own reincarnation.
                    (Words do nothing.)
The language in which I write is an ugly tool.
Sharpened corners force the poet to remove
one word after another, revising thoughts hopeless
as rainstorms
          off the nearest cliché.
Feelings divine meaning from words.
My feelings are malnourished.
The language in which I write closes hearts too easily.
For how can I use this pen to express you? A poem
                    not fit for words.
                    Not for one, nor for thousands.
Simple poetry is worthless compared to soft moments spent
in the corners of your eyes.
The page limits me to words, but I want to write wordless odes
          to you, that can only be read by me.
          I will memorize them like they were
          the shape of your face or the curve of your back.
You are my unwritten poem brought to life.
Let me devour every poetry book in search
          of the printed version of you, love.
                    (There is reason to live.)
There is haiku in your breaths.
There are sestinas on the undersides of your wrists
          that I used to kiss to pass the time.

copyright Giles Li, 2003

A boy runs shoeless onto the front lawn
as we pull our rental Ford Focus – good american car
into this subdivided slice of
prefabricated suburbia.

Here, women without husbands and
children with nighttime memories for daddys
make trips to wholesalers and auto mechanics
on repaid time.

The price of gas is no deterrent to freeway travel.

His mother, now pregnant with a third,
tells us she can only cook American food,
apologizes as I approach
a second helping of ribs.

Her kitchen, decorated with rosewood:
“From Okinawa,” she says. “we were there for 3 years.”

Now in Southern California
where the world outside gated military housing
speaks our American language
but still confusing without the help of translators.

He, five-year-old soccer star,
draws us pictures of crocodiles
labelled “alligator” or sometimes
with just the artist’s name, “dylan” -

tells me he always sits on the green at kindergarten
where children fall in line for recess
and nobody talks about Iraq.

Now it’s past his bedtime
his brother is already sleeping and Dylan is acting up
like he usually does
when mommy wants him to lie down
and he misses his father,

he’s not sleepy, just growing up too fast,
just learning too much about what’s real,
just knowing himself too well.

“But I want to be doing something, not just lying in bed,”
his mother holds him as he sings himself to sleep,
cries that he misses his daddy.
And when he finally tires himself out,
she cries too and knows tomorrow
it’ll happen again.

copyright Giles Li, 2006