Living Quarters Read online

  LIVING QUARTERS

  ADRIENNE SU

  MANIC D PRESS

  SAN FRANCISCO

  Living Quarters ©2015 by Adrienne Su. All rights reserved. Published by Manic D Press. For information, contact Manic D Press, PO Box 410804, San Francisco CA 94141 www.manicdpress.com

  Printed in the USA

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Su, Adrienne, 1967-

  [Poems. Selections]

  Living quarters / Adrienne Su.

  pages; cm

  ISBN 978-1-933149-89-9 (trade pbk. original : alk. paper)

  I. Title.

  PS3569.U13A6 2015

  811’.54––dc23

  2014044711

  FOR PEOPLE AND ANIMALS WHO HAVE NO HOME

  ALSO BY ADRIENNE SU

  MIDDLE KINGDOM

  SANCTUARY

  HAVING NONE OF IT

  CONTENTS

  I

  Earthbound

  Chinese Parsley

  Contentment

  1980

  Kitchen

  Sunday Dinner

  Asian Shrimp

  At the Checkout

  Supermarket Fruits

  When More is Better

  Dessert

  In Late November

  The Wife

  Rosemary

  II

  Turning in Early

  Leisure

  Complaint

  Insomnia

  To Stay in Place

  Bronchitis

  Affliction

  Carlisle, Pennsylvania

  Practice

  Bathtime

  The Frost Place

  To a Limited Extent

  Into a Rock

  On Writing

  III

  Weeding

  Backyard

  On Being Criticized for Coming from Suburbia

  July

  Raspberry Patch

  Ownership

  Grief

  Sage

  The Rosemary, Outside

  Tomatoes

  Mortals

  April

  First Garden

  Inclinations

  IV

  Procrastination

  Achievement

  Technology

  By the Sea

  On Seldom Going to the Movies

  Land of Plenty

  Youth

  If Only I’d Met You Earlier

  Radiology

  Downward Dog

  Learning Cursive

  Twenty-Two

  Adaptation

  To a Student Dying Young

  Acknowledgments

  I

  The door itself

  makes no promises.

  It is only a door.

  – Adrienne Rich

  Earthbound

  If anticipation

  is the high point of travel,

  we ought to vacation

  at home, reading manuals,

  marking vintage hotels

  and undiscovered vistas,

  composing the meals

  strangers will make us,

  just as, lacking money,

  I once took Italian

  at the state university,

  cooked from Marcella Hazan,

  dipped in and out of Dante.

  Although it was Iowa City,

  that summer still resonates

  as the summer of Italy.

  I distinguished myself in class

  by having no plans to travel.

  Others were making it happen,

  flying standby, lodging in hostels.

  I must have wanted a kingdom

  I could build in office or kitchen,

  then be home by bedtime,

  closing my eyes for vision.

  Chinese Parsley

  I never call it that.

  It evokes too freely: checkers,

  fire drill, ancient secret,

  zodiac, laundry, whispers.

  Does my culinary self

  object, because it isn’t

  parsley, or my research self,

  because its homeland isn’t

  China? One could venture

  it has spent enough centuries

  there to be considered

  citizen. It goes so speedily

  to seed, that’s thousands

  of generations. If pressed

  to explain my aversion

  to the term, I would attest

  to the difficulty, amid

  shoppers and vegetables,

  of trying to decide – is this

  a taco / biryani / spring-roll

  week, or is it minestrone /

  steak / roast chicken? – when

  all shorthand ends in parsley.

  Cilantro’s the better partition.

  Contentment

  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 that’s not fair),

  a kitchen where pots are 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

  who’s glimpsed her purpose to hide,

  unseen but not unhappy, for most of the party.

  As mother, I don’t see myself at all, in part

  because the self is invisible outside mirrors

  and photographs, in part because I’ll never

  occupy that house, having found the sacred

  space in my day, known what it had sentenced

  me to, and accepted with the unequivocal

  ease of a girl just old enough and viable.

  1980

  Mostly we waited, playing cards or Sorry!

  in the basement, while the parents sipped tea

  above us, salted melon seeds, dried plums,

  and husks mounding up in the table’s center.

  They spoke both languages; we spoke one;

  we intended them to live forever.

  That summer we had biked up and down

  the neighborhood hills, earned permission

  to cross one highway, and come around

  to the normal contradictions, matters

  of age and location. We could say it now:

  what we shared was not as it appeared.

  Dinner over, night coming on, we switched

  to Monopoly. It lasted too long; the frigid

  damp moved into our skinny frames.

  We went upstairs, nibbled the occasional

  plum, left the pit. The grownups sent us away,

  switched dialects, laughed at untranslatable

  anecdotes. That was the era when

  we felt like tagalongs, too old to run

  along and play, too young to go alone.

  Later, dragged to Oriental Provision,

  which smelled of fish and scallions,

  we tiptoed around the owners’ children,

  who wandered the aisles with dirty feet,

  downcast faces, and nothing to read.

  We didn’t all associate at school but usually

  said hello. Only the parents were positioned

  to fall into the circle – mirthful, otherworldly –

  and seem to travel. We never made it in.

  Kitchen

  Site of dumpling party,

  camp of holiday labor,

  invaded by loose-leaf,

  snack site, bar, pet station,

  it makes dinner possible

  but never makes dinner.

  Kingdom of creative p
otential,

  it has drained creative potential

  for centuries. Now stocked

  with life-source that, neglected,

  turns sickness-source,

  it has no proprietor,

  only guest chefs who double

  as guests. Yet its rituals

  still reanimate all

  who come from other rooms,

  even if they’re grandmothers

  or look like grandmothers

  or know their way around.

  Microwave, dishwasher, kettle:

  they may do only one thing well

  (or two), but let us let them try.

  A room shall never own a person.

  It is only a room.

  Sunday Dinner

  As if I didn’t have real work to do.

  As if I had envisioned the nation my parents had.

  As if the elders hadn’t promised something new.

  I was confident, like other women, like children.

  It couldn’t swallow me; I had had a chance to refuse.

  And what I wanted was innocuous and common:

  Everyone at a single table – never mind the unfinished

  papers, taking up a place. The gravy boat we never used.

  Now, as we flailed in the sea, it would have to float us.

  Salvation didn’t happen, by ritual or rite.

  The tragedy gathered slowly, litter on the road.

  Babies wailed. Hungry all the time, lacking appetite,

  I was finally ready. Someone said it in my head.

  I’d do it myself. Red meat. Saturday. Whoever was left.

  Just me? I was damned if I couldn’t consume that much flesh.

  Asian Shrimp

  What brute reduced forty-seven countries

  and the foods of four billion to an entrée

  so named? I prefer not to know, for the answer

  will be too close: someone I already treasure

  or passingly greet, who’s dwelled from birth

  in my adopted town, who as a youth unearthed

  a glittering kingdom interred in a remaindered

  cookbook, then dreamed of it nightly but never

  went, yet worked to bring a shadow of a replica

  of what it seemed to be, to Dutch Pennsylvania.

  At the Checkout

  they almost always pause to ask the names

  of greens: bok choy, collards, mizuna, mâche.

  Today I’m rung up by sweet-faced teenage

  JAMES, who scans at speed until he’s stopped

  by the broccoli rabe. “What’s this?” he mutters,

  and I nearly choke on the ways it is exalted –

  with pancetta on penne, with clams, smothered

  in garlic, souffléed, or blanched and salted –

  while he enters the code. “Oh, baby broccoli,”

  he reads, and rolls it out of his life. It’s not my age

  or how I see, but how I fail and fail again to be,

  that blinds me to what James perceives: broccoli babe.

  Supermarket Fruits

  Instead of ripening, they rot,

  covertly, from the center.

  Kiwi, mango, peach, pear

  imitate what they are not,

  fragrant lures for animals.

  Obdurate, the fruits take on

  the manner of a faux Cézanne,

  ubiquitous, pretty, inedible.

  Bought for their persuasive skins,

  they betray the trusting tongue:

  bitter, tannic, tart, long gone.

  If only we were false like them,

  we could use our perfect faces

  to infiltrate private spaces.

  When More Is Better

  First all the critters must have your attention.

  The animals are easier, not requiring reasons,

  but the children have complexity. The interval

  before they wake is always parenthetical,

  unusable for news or meditation. Lunch

  must be made, shoes found. You’re old enough

  to know the alternative: days of silence, yielding

  more silence, plus anxiety. Sometimes feeling

  lost, you ask your self rhetorically what

  she might do if you were found. She’d speak, but

  she’s asleep. You were warned about all of it,

  but all of it was in you, looking for an exit.

  When no one demanded your life, you gave it over

  anyway, to whoever was nearby. All was better

  when you made someone, and someone else,

  tiny, hungry. Sometimes when sleep is scarce

  and you’ve exploded your dowdiness quotient,

  you dream of paradise, but where? At the Giant,

  pushing the cart of offspring and perishables,

  mentally packing your rucksack of breakables

  and dry-clean-onlys, you know how the story

  would end. It wouldn’t even be literary.

  Dessert

  One day we’ll be inconsolable by sugar.

  Non-nourishing? Non-essential? Whoever

  says it surely lines up ducks so as to strike

  them down with neither grief nor appetite.

  In Late November

  Having spurned the anonymous frozen hulks

  in supermarket rows, we’re face to face

  or face to beak with knowledge: we plan to salt

  a bird that, down the street, still starts each day

  without foreboding, as if being moved from grass

  to grass to eat, then eat, were a human benevolence,

  a gift from strong to meek. The kindest path.

  Yet when the day arrives, despite not having met

  the flock, I wake in dread, aware of my nature.

  I’ve been staying up late, planning the feast,

  what to do with the leftover flesh, as the Mayflower

  tale unfolds for the next generation. At least

  now they include some gore (just a smidgen:

  boat diseased, some deaths). Meeting the farmer,

  I picture the hundred dismembered chickens

  I’ve known only as limbs this year and wonder

  which of my crimes is the worst. “You can’t

  get a fresher bird,” he says. “This turkey

  was walking around this morning.” A pang

  illuminates the absent-minded grocery

  runs I make all year. For what are we thankful?

  A roof, hot meals, each other, the possible end

  of two wars. Gratitude mixes with animal

  feelings or thoughts, whatever they are when

  they come without words. It’s my favorite

  holiday – no gifts, no faith or its baggage –

  but it too has its tidy scriptures, an edited

  version for children. I take the package.

  The Wife

  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. Ea
ch 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,

  her life, theirs. What was meant

  to happen did, and just as in

  any accident, they’d later count

  the hundred ways it might have been

  better, less violent, or more profound.

  Rosemary

  Its name, compound of two, belies

  the spikiness, assertive oil, power

  to overtake. If it ever symbolized

  rule by woman, I didn’t know, even

  as I nurtured one in bonsai form

  while living like half a citizen;

  of course it withered. It also carried

  odors of memory, loyalty; brides

  wore it in garlands; it was buried

  with certain dead. Having treated it

  as seasoning, I earned its desertion,

  snipping too literally, only to eat it

  (white beans, roast potatoes, lamb).

  Its mystique dissolved like a woman’s:

  neglected, turned colleague, custodian,

  kitchen standby, bereft of desire,

  it first dropped leaves, then paled despite

  textbook care. I wrote off the failure

  as bonsai fussiness, my ungreen thumb,

  even as I moved from town to town,

  convinced the magical day would come

  when everything was transferred:

  from story to myth, renter to owner,

  early to late, tentative to empowered.

  II

  Grown, and miles from home, why do I shy

  From every anonymous door-slam or dull eye?

  – Jean Valentine

  Turning in Early

  Part centering of gravity,

  part renouncing of company,

  better in winter

  but feasible always,

  the aim is living larger

  by private destination,

  getting ahead of the sun.

  So much is broken

  by daylight that refuses

  to reconcile,

  rest may resist,

  breath forget its depth,

  but the site of forgetting