Dear Exile,

I love the first
cold slap of water coming through
the pipes in winter, the cornhusk
smell of heat pressing down
on eyelids in summer; 

                     how windowless nights
speckle fields with faint 
yet persistent 
light—

If I gave up, 
if I stopped desiring
the ordinary things, ordinary 
rituals we hardly think about 
                      even as we do them—

Could I forget, completely?

		        Moths tuck themselves 
into drawers, where they 
work out their hidden
citzenships in scripts
of perforated silver.

Taut 
hammock threads 
loosen; day gives in to night,
		        and night again to day, 
 
Who was I before the earth
shook my world to pieces, before parts 
of barely formed history were buried 
along with beams of a house that no longer exists?

At the Chinese restaurant 
they served coffee or service tea 
		      in thick white cups, 
and old men in frayed sweaters 
hunched eternally over chessboards.

Roads wound through 
mountains but at a certain juncture, 
            one could glimpse the sea.

            Perhaps I am that house 
to which I can no longer return. Even now, 
more than just the stones are forgetting me.

Phenomenology of Return

Don’t we all wish to return,
to discover how infinity

reaches across the world in a shimmer
of overlapping circles, unfazed by obstacle?

It simply goes around each tree in the wood,
spreads a filmy veil over every house, falling-

down shed, office building, and church; the sign
above the 24-hour drugstore and pool hall; 

the alley where stray cats congregate,
giving rise to rumors about the most delicious 

steamed meat buns in the noodle shop next door.
In the story about a fish that grants a boon, 

the fisherman’s wife knows that the sweetest
meanings are always closest to the bone. 

She tells him to go back and ask a deeper
question, which sadly he interprets as merely 

a demand for more. Here she is, setting out to do
the hard work herself then— peeling back the body’s 

outer cover, waterproofing the heart, re-rigging
the wings. So much ceremony, in order to arrive 

at the spot where the water gushes without
measure, gives before one even thinks to ask.

~ Lithoredo abatanica

One of my favorite parts in Woman 
Warrior is when a bird leads the girl 
deep into the mountains, where an old 
couple who are really Jedi or Kung 
Fu masters train her to become

a great warrior. She fasts for days
and days then eats only ferns or moss
or shoots, drinks only dew or melted snow,
which sounds more extreme than keto. 
When her hunger is almost unbearable, 

she either hallucinates or a rabbit appears 
and jumps into the fire, sacrificing itself 
so she might eat every part of it, return 
to the world strengthened, and vanquish 
all her country's foes. I don't know 

how she does it: how she demolishes entire
armies and rescues women that have been kept 
in basements or dungeons, then returns to her
village, serene as can be, to take up again
the ordinary life of wife and daughter. 

When I was a thin and scabby-
kneed schoolgirl prone to nosebleeds 
and allergies, you could see clear 
across the roofs of neighboring houses 
to the parish church and adjacent 

elementary school and tell 
when students were dismissed for the day. 
Then my mothers would whip up an afternoon
snack: hotdog slices piled on a plate of fried
rice; on the side, a bottle of orange soda 

or Coke. They'd sit me down as soon as I 
came through the door; I ate and struggled 
to finish everything, not sparing the last
grain, as they stood sentinel on each side.
Heroic eating, scholars call it—that trope 

in novels where immigrant characters pick 
the flesh of fish and fowl close to the bone,
then boil these to get at the nourishing
marrow. Neck bones and gizzards, chicken
feet, yards of innards washed clean 

to make garlands packed with meat 
and onions and blood—Which is to say,
all the parts that others deem savage,
though abroad they might try haggis 
and a wee dram. This is not 

to be confused with Mukbang, those
YouTube cooking/eating broadcasts 
where in one sitting, the hosts push 
enough noodles and eggs and hot sauce 
into their mouths to feed a dozen men. 

Some of the most amazing are petite 
women like Yuka Kinoshita, who has more 
than five million followers and can pack
anywhere between five and twenty-five 
thousand calories into her wispy  

frame. Since I've become someone  
who saves all the leftovers in the fridge, 
I'm not sure how to think of this kind 
of extravagance. While I take pleasure
in food and flavor, I like to think

that eating could have some kind 
of quiet purpose beyond itself—
perhaps like rock-eating shipworms 
who tunnel with ease through limestone
as if it were a loaf of sourdough

or an apple: changing in time 
a river's course, leaving behind a hive 
of hollow cells, tiers of capsule hotel-
like spaces where snails and crabs 
and fish could take up residence.