Adrienne Su

Poe ms

Contents
The Lazy Susan

On Writing

Contentment

To a Limited Extent

Radiology

The Pen

On Not Writing in Cafs

Love

The Countdown

10

Post

10

Having It All

12

The Outer Cape

13

Summer

14

Adolescence

15

Escape from the Old Country

16

China III

18

By the Sea

19

Chinese Parsley

20

Mortals

21

First Garden

22

The Wife

23

Procrastination

25

Fear

26

Things Chinese

27

Adrienne Su
Poe ms

Th e L az y S u s an
The lazy Susan, in antiquity, would have been a fire.
Drinking all night, the parents never get drunk.
This is an ancient brew, with nuts, seeds, fruit
to fuel the hours, to light a center.
The tea dispensers orange light reminds us:
theyre in the dining room, laughing in Chinese
while we play Scrabble or Monopoly out here.
Theyre telling stories we dont bother to record
because the nights are long. Weve heard them before.
We dont comprehend the punch lines. Theyre tired.
They live this way because of us.
We live this way because of them.
We dont comprehend the punch lines. Theyre tired
because the nights are long. Weve heard them before,
telling stories we dont bother to record.
While we play Scrabble or Monopoly out here,
theyre in the dining room, laughing in Chinese.
The tea dispensers orange light reminds us
to fuel the hours, to light a center.
This is an ancient brew, with nuts, seeds, fruit.
Drinking all night, the parents never get drunk.
The lazy Susan, in antiquity, would have been a fire.
The New Yorker (November 7, 2016, p. 61)

On Wr it ing
A love poem risks becoming a ruin,
public, irretrievable, a form of tattooing,
while loss, being permanent,
can sustain a thousand documents.
Loss predominates in history,
smorgasbord of death, betrayal, heresy,
crime, contagion, deployment, divorce.
A writer could remain aboard
the ship of grief and thrive, never
approaching the shores of rapture.
What can be said about elation
that the elated, seeking consolation
from their joy, will go to books for?
Its wiser and quicker to look for
a poem in the dentists chair
than in the luxury suite where
eternal love, declared, turns out
to be eternal. Who cares about
a strangers bliss? Thus the juncture
where Im stalled, unaccustomed
to integrity, despite your presence,
our tranquility, and every confidence.
New England Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012, p. 43,)

C on t e n t m en t
On obvious levels I long for it: daily
domestic certainty, light, familiarity,
the family dog, family. I see an armchair
reserved for the man (though thats not fair),
a kitchen where somethings always astir,
clamoring little ones, invasions at Easter
and Christmas by in-laws, out-of-tune crowds
on birthdays, board games, sporting goods,
and downstairs or up, room for a child
whos seen the edge of her destiny to hide,
unseen but not unhappy, for most of the party.
As mother, I dont see myself at all, in part
because the self is invisible outside mirrors
and photographs, in part because Ill never
occupy that house, having found the sacred
space in my day, known what it had sentenced
me to, and accepted it with the unequivocal
ease of a girl just old enough and viable.
New England Review, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2012, p. 44)

To a L im it ed Ex t en t
its not about how far you fall
but how: you could break a leg
by missing what youd barely call
a height, like the bottom step,
your mind on another planet,
your body dully at home, moving
laundry or a chair. The damage
may be minor, but it quietly ruins
your plans. Never again, you say,
shall I carry laundry or a chair.
For a time you dont, until the day
you have to strive again, to scale
the hill or wall that is the ground,
though still youd prefer not to lead
this march. Others have renounced
much more. Everyone needs
to be inert sometimes; you can sit out
further rounds. But being too strong
enables hope to entwine with doubt
so that both can prove you wrong:
where others would have given in
to joys unreasonable limits,
you who were always too disciplined
at managing life, managed to miss it.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 85, No. 2, (Summer 2011, p. 53)

Radiol o g y
When the tech starts asking questions
Whered you go to school? What
do you teach?I brace for astonishment
that its English, not math or Chinese, but
she registers plain delight Im a writer.
There must be no one in Radiology
to talk to. She seems to hope I can tell her
a story, but all I can muster is the anxiety
that trailed the impact, a week ago, and recall
how I sat with the coldest object I could find,
a bottle of water, on my headno physical
ache of blood or bone, only the dread my mind
unleashed, its fortresses leveled by the blow.
I knew, without reason, hed soon be gone,
everything canceled, the future mine, although
wed mapped it together: oceans, mountains,
avenues. Season of flower, season of ice
wherever I wanted, he was going to take me.
The radiologist hopes Ill talk about my life.
All I can offer is, I thought bodily injury
wouldnt ruin my workI make my living
with my mindbut then I hit my head,
at which she morphs into an angel, admitting,
We arent in control of our destiny, the best
small talk Ive had all week. All the talk is small
compared to what hes going to say, the moment
hes able. Half an hour later, the nurses call
me over: the scan has revealed no fragments
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of bone. I know they were fragments of grief,

not bone. I must have wept them out that day
when he hurried over with ice in a cloth
and wrapped me in his arms, not quite the way
he would a few days later, when he no longer
loved meout of ordinary human sentiment,
the way youd put your arms around a stranger
youve found at the scene of an accident:
commonly, to keep her warm for the interim
until, having moments ago entered your life,
she passes back out of it without a name
and into that of the first paramedic to arrive.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 85, No. 2, (Summer 2011, p. 5455)

Th e P e n
must have heft,
its job being physical;
cant afford to apologize
with a ladylike barrel;
must, because its owner
is not, be dependable;
and, serving perchance
as the solitary vehicle
of frank deliberation,
or as central receptacle
of quotidian detail for its
seemingly nonverbal
companion in exile,
ought to be refillable
with insomnia, regret,
elation, impossible
plans, and the tedious
ache of perennial
relinquishment, the only way
out of which is the ritual
of lifting the instrument
with intent to unravel
the thread of ink that turns
into flesh as it travels.

Having None of It (Su, 2009)

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On N ot Wr i t i ng i n Caf s
for S. W.

Its too much like sex in a car:

fine as a concept (everyone needs
to be seen at times by strangers),
but reality seldom agrees.
Its clumsy. Whoever happens
along as you start to forget yourself
is not what you fancied a relation,
a stranger you know too well.
The hand that isnt holding the pen
flails like an animal pinned by a leg.
And the gorgeous epiphany, just then
at the tip of your tongue, has fled.
Having None of It (Su, 2009)

L ov e
Not being in it or even in one of its empty forms,
I can see it for what it is: minor-to-major illness,
interferer with plans, abandoner of friends,
root cause of insomnia and death of appetite,
inconvenience making its holder ridiculous.
I say holder even though it sounds ridiculous
because I dislike the word lover for suggesting the illicit
and/or continuous action, as clearly one can love
while doing other things as most of the time,
even when unable to think of anything but the beloved,
thats what people do but to love and be loved
is apparently not the same as to inhale and exhale,
or to have a circulatory system, or to be,
with or without affection. Such prejudicial usage
is nearly as unfair as this cold spring day
on which the shoots of irises have risen halfway,
catalogs overflow with swimsuits that swear
to correct all lacks and excesses, and theres ice
on the patio, where Id be reading if it were warmer
and if nature didnt always interfere, raining
bugs or blowing the pages or just plain raining
on the Week in Review the moment I begin
to comprehend the destruction weve wrought
in where was it? another distant land from which
sons and daughters keep coming back ruined.
Having None of It (Su, 2009)

Th e C o un t d ow n
Wed unleashed the dogs of war,
not even sure what the bone of contention,
said to be buried in the backyard, was anymore.
No treaty had a dogs chance, or a Chinamans,
against what crashed to the ground
when the clouds opened. We wouldve been
fine with cats & dogs. But no one was there
to make the lion lie down; the bull
had toured the china shop, and shards
lay all over the bed. So there we were
when night fell, bone-tired, with nowhere
to sleep but the freshly cleared earth,
which we didnt even circle three times.
Having None of It (Su, 2009)

Post
Weve not only ousted the dictator,
weve also finished reveling in it:
ripped down portraits, hauled off furniture,
danced in the alleys, let the artists
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out of jail. Everyones feeling heady

still, despite the agenda: rehabilitate
teachers, fix roads and factories,
reunite families, sort the mass graves,
catalogue evidence. It isnt a party.
Some things will smell; there may be violence.
And patience the limping economy
cant sustain reparations. The extravagance
of founding day has passed. We know
people crave another hour of resurrection,
long-forbidden light on long-closed
eyes, the embrace of the mother or son
despaired of, the clean vindications,
freedom to talk. Everyone cherished
the waving from tanks, the radiant reception
of peacekeepers as they established
their posts. We all want to feel like that
again, and will in time, but no future
worth receiving will descend as fast
as a tyrants head. Were nearly a desert
island now, without schools or a roof;
were a broken aqueduct trying to reach
a metropolis. An army without boots.
Were an ancient language nobody speaks;
our national anthem has gone unplayed
so long, our children can barely recite it.
Were the final book in a smoldering library,
waiting for literate eyes. May nothing ignite it.
Having None of It (Su, 2009)

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H av ing It A l l
We bought the concept like a dress
wed never wear to anything;
it simply looked too fabulous.
Now that the emperors shivering
in his skin, our lives are half done,
the family hungry and clamoring
for its share of what we promised
to lavish, back when we were flush.
Not that we dont want to give it
we can feel it in our breasts,
the generosity weve become,
but at times it is our very flesh
that resists when we offer it up.
There wont be anything left,
it would say if it could, and what
will become of the little ones then?
Once we were a bottomless well.
Once we were mighty as men;
we talked and drank and loved
as fiercelyoh, how they loved us back!
Then one day love or whatever it was
ceased to be just for the fun of it.
The event that completed us undid
the cloth. And now well have none of it.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 82, No. 2, (Summer 2008, p. 137)

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Th e O ut er Cap e
Dozens of us hung on there, trying to love
the moment, trying not to need belongings.
Daily, the light poured in, requesting something,
and thinking wed know better what to make
without the confusion of money, we pledged
not to need it, even as we hit the lower edge
of no longer being young. Renunciation
began to look less voluntary; onerous
questions cropped up in the gorgeous
middle of the dunes: What if this is the future?
What if that crying seagull isnt the ghost
of anyone, but a bird, simply using its voice?
Through snowstorms and power failures
we were bound to each other by collective
emigration, until we began to get picked off,
one by one, by fame or love or the system,
leaving the rest to wrestle with our senses
of conviction. As the ice along Route 6
turned back to water, the hordes returned
to take our lonesome beaches; we fumed
as we made their coffee, as if theyd ruined
everything, stomped on our purpose,
as if wed hit the damaged area of a map
we were trying, even as we traveled, to unfold.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 82, No. 2, (Summer 2008, p. 138)

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Su m m e r
Everyone knows about summer:
it finally fails to deliver
the goods. It singes your skin,
rains on your reading list,
insidiously lets you sleep in.
It sneakily sends up blossoms
so gorgeous and fleet-footed
you hardly notice them
going to seed. A beautiful woman
or beautiful man, it tears off
your clothing, leaves you forlorn.
Since its all that December is not,
its all you desire, all you regret
having let back in. In September
you cross your heart, murmur Never
again. And each spring you forget
how you wept, the wasted weeks
and unreturned calls. Around slinks
June, sweetly inquiring, What books
have you written me? Where
have you been? Please oh please
come along . . . Your compass,
memory, gut cry No, but you act
like youve only been born.
One bright look from the merciless
hottest of seasons, and you go.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 82, No. 2, (Summer 2008, p. 139)

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A d ol e s c enc e
The trouble was not about finding acceptance.
Acceptance was available in the depths of the mind
And among like people. The trouble was the look into the canyon
Which had come a long time earlier
And spent many years being forgotten.
The fine garments and rows of strong shoes,
The pantry stocked with good grains and butter
Everything could be earned by producing right answers.
Answers were important, the canyon said,
But the answers were not the solution.
A glimpse into the future had shown the prairie
On which houses stood sturdily.
The earth was moist and generous, the sunlight benevolent.
The homesteaders dreamed up palaces and descendants,
And the animals slept soundly as stones.
It was a hard-earned heaven, the self-making
Of travelers, and often, out on the plains,
Mirages rose of waterfalls, moose, and rows of fresh-plowed soil,
But nobody stopped to drink the false water.
Real water being plentiful, they were not thirsty.
A few made their fortunes from native beauty,
Others from native strength, but most from knowledge,
As uncertainties in science could be written off to faith.
Faith was religious and ordinary life physical,
And spiritual was a song that had not yet arrived.
Sanctuary (Su, 2006)

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E s c ap e f r om t h e O l d C o unt ry
I never had to make one,
no sickening weeks by ocean,
no waiting for the aerogrammes
that gradually ceased to come.
Spent the babysitting money
on novels, shoes, and movies,
yet the neighborhood stayed empty.
It had nothing to do with a journey
not undertaken, not with dialect,
nor with a land that waited
to be rediscovered, then rejected.
As acid rain collected
above the suburban hills, I tried
to imagine being nothing, tried
to be able to claim, I have
no culture, and be believed.
Yet the land occupies the person
even as the semblance of freedom
invites a kind of recklessness.
Tradition, unobserved, unasked,
hangs on tight; ancestors roam
into reverie, interfering at the most
awkward moments, first flirtations,
in doorways and dressing rooms
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But of course. Here in America,

no one escapes. In the end, each traveler
returns to the town where, everyone
knew, she hadnt even been born.
Sanctuary (Su, 2006)

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C h ina I I I
It is too much a part of things,
even though the source is not within.
In small American cities
with and without universities,
it keeps a constant presence
in the Confucian sense,
the inner arriving to match
the outer, spirit not separate
from matter (the latter illusion
left by the missions
the people have made such fine
use of ). There are times
when you have to pretend
to embrace an idea or befriend
your adversaries. If constantly
misinterpreted, use the mystery
as currency. You have to start
somewhere. Be wise: depart
from where theyve already put you.
A country itself cant betray you.
Sanctuary (Su, 2006)

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By t h e S ea
Wedded to plans, we make them happen,
straight into the eye of a tropical depression,
water halfway up the tires, ferries potentially
canceled. The plans to find tranquility
between the uphill of going and the plateau
of having gone. That night, the inn, though
waterlogged, serves hamachi and oysters
to an echoing hall. Next day, clearer,
at least one bride goes by: its that kind of place.
Bowls of perfect apples adorn the hallways;
no one minds directing strangers to the lighthouse.
Its too cold to swim, which to me is a plus
Im at a loss in full sunlightthough here,
the beach behaves like a season or color,
incidental, a circumstance. One of us always
remembers the way; one of us has the key;
if only Id known what was possible then.
Or so we say as rising waters undo more plans,
then make them again, into something else good.
The land wavers. The sky seems to know it would.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)

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C h in e s e Par s l e y
Ive never called it that.
It evokes too freely: checkers,
fire drill, ancient secret,
zodiac, laundry, whispers.
Is it my culinary self
that objects, because it isnt
parsley, or my research self,
because its homeland isnt
China? One could venture
its spent enough centuries
there to be considered
citizen. It goes so speedily
to seed, thats thousands
of generations. If pressed
to explain my aversion
to the term, Id attest
to the difficulty, amid
shoppers and vegetables,
of trying to decideis this
a taco/biryani/spring-roll
week, or is it minestrone/
steak/roast chicken?when
all shorthand ends in parsley.
Cilantros the better partition.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)

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Mortal s
Again were paying for crimes
we didnt know wed committed: being smart
or beautiful, able to throw a discus too far.
Normally were doing the unglamorous
answering mail, hanging clothes to dry
when the thunderbolt splits the workaday sky,
high, capricious wrath transforming us
into rainclouds, rocks, or squirrels to be chased
by our dogs, the orphans we saved
from gas or the needle. That morning
wed bought phosphate-free detergent,
voted, biked, declined a prescription,
but the gods were furious. Was it something
cruel we thought, the vagueness of our piety,
distant tragic news we didnt take time to read?
The turning point must have been small,
that leatherbound journal with acid-free paper,
the little black dress, days of clear weather,
a glimmer for which we didnt give thanks,
though were unsure to whom (it feels like artifice)
and its never been clear where to leave the sacrifice.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)

21

First G ar den
All summer I've tried to hold on,
extend the season of freedom,
pictured false springs on windowsills,
a hoard of frozen tomatoes. As if autumn
could be held off, as if I didn't love it,
as if lacking in solitude and idleness,
I've dragged out each day, prolonged it
by not enjoying it. This morning was crisp
though mostly summer. Expecting
to mind, I didn't. The sunflowers
with broken necks, stems of bitter
broccoli, tired nasturtiumseverything
I loved could go to ruin. As their motions
and protests have slowly turned legible,
I've been able to pass most days alone
another year, even as the children
move closer to leaving and my devotion
remains in its wrong and right position.
I've forgotten my center, tried to take it
from the soil, always with excellent reasons.
Nothing's wrong with loving the earth,
but the earth is one of many necessary
altars. The secret of creation would never be
so obvious. I've got to embrace the fear,
be a failure, act more like a president:
give up the re-digging, excess alertness,
misinterpreting of wiltkilling the plant
that wanted neglect, with kindness.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)
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Th e Wif e
She was nothing. I was she. Even
though she understood, the pouring
of silvery light into the kitchen
each brisk newlywed morning,
the crackling of loaves being lifted
from the stone, the blackness of tea
made days unfold as if divinely scripted,
as if all were a discipline, universally
obeyed. The lack of plans, the hunger
of the ocean, the slight uncertainty
about necessities created neither
fear nor worry; all who were officially
we would find their way. A man
would protect his home. The community
had ratified it; there were documents.
In many directions lay the imagery
of peace: the neighbors quince trees,
orderly gardens, dogs who never
gave chase. There was ambiguity
of duty, money was tight, failures
went unassigned, but many had lived
with worse. Each day yielded a little
more peace. The rain let up, or fuzzy mist
shrouded the hills, which were beautiful.
Like the tide, like the sun going pink
and waning while she boned the bird
or turned the carrots, the radio her link
to agents of consequence, it unfurled,
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her life, theirs. What was meant

to happen did, and just as in
any accident, theyd later count
the hundred ways it might have been
better, less violent, or more profound.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)

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P r o c rast inat ion

It was surely invented by demons.
No one else could make it the human
norm, defied only by those military
civilians no one can identify
except as aberrations everyone
resents, know-it-alls impervious
to temptation, misfit geniuses,
certain as engines. Released into
the world of people, they cling to
order, chronically surprised
no one else met requirements,
complacently holding the ruler
by which the rest of us measure
growth, as we quit, start over,
scale the hills of our failure,
and descend the other side,
telling stories of our lives.
Living Quarters (Su, 2005)

25

Fear
From the beginning, they learned not to feel any.
Theyre usually good people, praised by neighbors,
Quick to shovel snow from the walkways.
Theyre reliably cheerful, even with telemarketers,
And their houses are clean from Monday to Sunday.
But its hard to picture them at night, unable to rest,
Sick from the latest on Iraq and Afghanistan.
Name a current war, and they imagine terrorists
And despots, not toddlers who cant understand
That they mustnt cry because everything depends on it.
Ambiguity is all they cant tolerate.
Stories without resolution, abstract portraitureWhy stir things up for the hell of it?
Theyre willing to discuss the new counterculture,
Even read a book you suggest, but as they see it,
The past is over. If they were unloved by their mothers
Or shouted into submission at every stage
Of development, theyre fully recovered.
If others keep having kids they cant raise
And quitting jobs, its from lack of resolve, or bad culture.
Theyre glad to explain their position: We overcame, too.
Our parents used to be poor. One of them was violent.
We were brought up on unspoken racism and junk food
But turned out OK and not racist. Hey, were resilient.
We triumphed over rocky beginnings. And so can you.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Winter 2004, pp. 99)

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Th ings C h i n e s e
Once, I tried to banish them all from my writing.
This was America, after all, where everyones at liberty
To remake her person, her place, or her poetry,
And I lived in a town a long way from everything
Where discussions of diversity
Centered mainly on sexuality.
My policy, born of exhaustion with talk about race
And the quintessentially American wish for antecedents,
Eliminated most of my family, starting with the grandparents,
Two of whom stayed Chinese to their final days,
Two of whom were all but defined by their expertise
On the food of the country I was trying to excise.
It canceled out the expensive center
Of an intense undergraduate curriculum
And excluded the only foreign language I could talk in.
It wiped out my parents earliest years
And converted them to 1950s Georgians
Whod always attended church and school, like anyone.
My father had never paused at two water fountains
And asked a white man which he should drink from,
And never told his children what the answer had been.
My mother had never arranged a migration,
Solo at seventeen, from Taipei to wherever,
But had simply appeared in Gainesville out of ether,
And nothing about their original languages
Had brought them together. Their children
Had never needed to explain to anyone
27

Why distinctness and mystery were not advantages

When they were not optional, and never wondered
If particular features had caused particular failures.
For months I couldnt write anything decent
Because banned information kept trying to enter
Like bungled idioms in the speech of a foreigner.
I was my own totalitarian government
Or an HMO that wouldnt pay for a specialist,
And I was the dissident or patient who perished.
The hope was to transcend the profanity of being
Through the dissolution of description and story,
Which I thought might turn out to be secondary
To a semi-mystical state of unseeing,
But everywhere I went there was circumstance,
All of it strangely tainted by my very presence.
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 78, No. 4 (Winter 2004, pp. 99100)

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