A Place Called No Homeland Read online

  A PLACE CALLED NO HOMELAND

  Copyright © 2017 by Kai Cheng Thom

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

  Cover illustration by Emily Yee Clare and Wai-Yant Li

  Cover and text design by Oliver McPartlin

  Edited by Amber Dawn

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Thom, Kai Cheng, author

  A place called no homeland / Kai Cheng Thom.

  Poems.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-679-9 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55152-680-5 (HTML)

  I. Title.

  PS8639.H559P63 2017 C811’.6 C2017-900910-9

  C2017-900911-7

  Contents

  title page

  copyright

  diaspora babies

  in your mouth

  there is a poem

  what the moon saw

  its name was the Boy Without A Penis

  good communication

  we did not ask for

  downtown beastside

  when you die

  the river

  girlboy, you femme femme fabulous

  prayer

  made

  between friends

  queer tribe

  peat moss man

  green boy

  things you need to know

  you can be me when i’m gone

  dear white gay men

  interracial psychology

  you & me

  dear now

  growing pangs

  the wounded for healing

  inside voice

  the lady in the moon

  when is a woman?

  the funny thing about violence: six meditations on a theme

  stealing fire

  doctor’s daughter

  hunger p(h)antom

  autopsky

  some things i have done

  shelter: a glosa

  book fetish

  your white cisgender boyfriend can’t save you from the end of the world

  3 love stories

  that trans woman

  sometimes my body is a slutty bitch bad girl

  trauma is not sacred

  i guess you could say that i’m just tired of The Movement

  acknowledgments

  about the author

  diaspora babies

  diaspora babies, we

  are born of pregnant pauses/spilled

  from unwanted wombs/squalling invisible-ink poems/written in the margins

  of a map of a place

  called No Homeland

  old gong gong honoured uncle is the man i won’t become/

  BBQ pork-scented sorrow and red

  bean paste buns he sold on street corners in Chinatown/handing out sweetbread

  and stories

  for seventy-five cents each/red meat and red hands stained

  by the winter wind’s violence/as the Goddess of Mercy watched/pitying

  from her curbside altar

  diaspora bodies, we

  wrap lips around pregnant pauses/spill

  salt fluids from unwanted bodies/squalling invisible-ink poetry/written in the

  margins

  of a map of a place

  called No Homeland

  my boy makes me breakfast the morning after/he’s the air i breathe/love-

  flavoured oxygen/i taste him everywhere/sun-dried orange peel candy/like the kind

  my father used to bring on car trips/the colour of his skin/brown

  salty-sweet/we gorge ourselves on love

  not thinking about tomorrow/there’s never enough

  time/to make you full/never enough flesh

  to fill your skin/we open our mouths for stories/for sun-tinted histories

  and swallow each other whole/here in this place

  with no room for mercy

  diaspora secrets, we

  enclose in pregnant pauses/write on the walls

  of unwanted wombs/invisible-ink poems in the margins

  of bodies/living out a map of a place

  called No Homeland

  red’s the color of my mother’s scars/as though the Goddess of Mercy

  went finger-painting across my mother’s face/a mask

  made of Things We Don’t Talk About

  there some stories that are never told/but known

  nonetheless we bake them into bread/fill buns with secrets

  like sweet lotus paste/ “what can’t be cured must be endured”/

  “chinese families

  don’t talk about our feelings”/“we wash them down

  with pork”/ “do as you are told, child”/ “eat what’s in your bowl”

  swallow it/bitter or sweet

  some violence, we

  keep inside our bodies/scar tissue/“what love?

  the kind they show in gwai lo films?

  chinese women don’t speak

  of love”/ “we know

  that people will laugh at us”

  some bodies can’t be touched/some poems

  cannot be written/just felt

  diaspora haunted, we

  hunt for pregnant pauses/give birth

  from unwanted yellow wombs/bodies

  like invisible-ink poems/ghost children drawing maps in the margins/

  of a place called No Homeland

  in your mouth

  there were no words in your mouth,

  but there was a pen in your head

  you wanted to make friends, but wrote stories instead

  you fear to fight the feather tip scratching at the inside of your skull

  afraid to fight the finding that fucking’s no good at all

  now there’s pen between your thighs and he won’t look you in the eyes

  as he pounds you till sunrise, he stops once to say

  hey

  you look afraid

  what’s the matter

  but you don’t answer, why don’t you answer

  you should answer but the answer don’t matter, do it?

  cuz there’s a pen between your thighs, no reflection

  in your eyes, and a poem in sticky ink

  a poem in sticky ink

  a poem in sticky-icky sticky-icky invisible ink

  that says, you always lie

  you’re a bad ugly boy and your lips will always lie

  there are no words in your mouth

  but there’s a pen in your head

  you want to tell the truth

  but you told stories instead

  there is a poem

  scratched onto the walls of my throat

  no one has heard it

  but it is there

  what the moon saw

  when i was in grade five, i learned in school that the shadows on the moon

  are really craters formed by the impact of meteorites pulled in by gravity.

  lak
es and valleys on the face of the moon, scars left by an invisible force. my mother

  had three long scars on her face

  the shape and colour of the crescent moon.

  i thought they were beautiful.

  liked to sit on her lap and trace them with my fingertips

  until i grew too old for such things.

  too old to sit on my mother’s lap. too old

  to touch my mother’s face. old enough for desire

  to rise and swell, glowing pearlescent beneath my skin, singing i want

  i want i want to be touched, kissed, tasted, told

  you drive me crazy like the moon.

  sound of baba’s fist against my face

  if you want to be my son

  sound of knuckles

  against bone

  like a meteorite striking

  the surface of the moon.

  if you want to live in my house

  sound of his hand, whispering through the air

  in the lines on his hand, ancient and full of grace

  i saw all the love

  and terror

  and bitterness and rage

  and love once again in my father’s heart the shadow-shapes

  the story echoes

  that bound us to each other and a place across the sea

  i’d never seen. the only inheritance we would share

  sound of his hand meeting mine

  sound of my own rage, my heartbeat

  thundering murdermurdermurder and love in my ears

  my mother, leaping to her feet. “if you touch him again, i’ll kill you

  scars burning like fire across her face and our house fell silent, frozen

  in time, quiet as the lakes of the moon

  i want you to see, to listen between the lines

  to notice not only the four letters that set love and violence apart

  but also the four they have in common

  see my history, the lines on my face

  there is more to us than we can say an invisible thread

  a force of gravity, a storyline binding us all together:

  my father, his fist, my mother, the scar. me and moon and you, my love

  and you.

  its name was the Boy Without A Penis

  some people also called it the Twinky Without a Winky, or occasionally, The Dickless Wonder. it didn’t mind. it never wanted for other names. it never knew anything different. it lived in cornersincupboardsin holes in the wall. it knew a lot about holes. the things that hide there. the things that get stuck inside them. it spent nights in the grickle-grass garden its parents had stopped planting long ago. stood with its bare feet in the dirt wish-whispering at the moon, make me precious. make me lovely. make me unlonely. make me a star. like Gollum, like Ginsberg, like gratitude, like grace.

  i am with you

  in Eden

  where the serpent is longing for adam

  i am with you

  in Eden

  with your fruit caught in my throat

  it wondered about the hollow space. the gap. the GAPING HOLE where its penis could have been. could have, not should have, because there was so much potential in that piece of virgin real estate. so many options to try. a bouquet of roses (dethorned, of course) or a tiny zoo of origami unicorns. the Boy Without A Penis liked to curl up in corners and dream up cinematic fantasies all featuring the Place Between its Legs. like smuggling diamonds across the border. a handful of gemstones blazing inside its body like hidden fire. in the place where a penis could have been. the Boy stored memories and sunbeams and secrets and dust. stories that were not about emptiness but about growing about changing and being whole.

  i am with you

  in the Homeland

  where my spirit is waiting for the body it left behind

  i am with you

  in the Homeland

  a flower tucked between my thighs

  the Boy Without A Penis wanted to know things. and see things. it wanted to laugh loud and long and raucously without fear of shame. it wanted sushi. and sex. possibly but not necessarily at the same time. it craved the sensations of touching and heart-pounding and shivering in the rain. it wanted to learn about stuff. all the stuff like what makes the wind howl and moan in pleasure or fear. how

  to give people orgasms. how to grow tomatoes and the name of the person who lives in the moon. so it struck out on its own, left cupboards and corners and grickle-grass behind, to seek out wider places. whistling a song to the wind

  oh, oh, the places i’ll go. the places i’ll see, the loves that i’ll know.

  oh, oh, the places i’ll go. and the wind whispered back

  beware, beware, there are wolves out there.

  beware of wolves in the wide world.

  i am with you

  in Avalon

  looking for dreams in the mist

  i am with you

  in Avalon

  remembering the future we had

  the Boy Without A Penis walked up hill and down dale through bush through briar. it went to cities. scouring concrete canyons and the thumping underground. looking for a job for sex for beauty for blow. everywhere it went people wanted to know: where was its penis? they didn’t understand about holes. about sunbeams and secrets and memories and dust and they were disgusted by the scent of grickle-grass that still clung to its skin. “go home,” they said, “no offense, but you’re just not a good fit here.” they said, “it’s not that i’m intolerant, but there’s just no way i could ever work with you, be friends with you, want you, have sex with you. it’s not that you’re ugly you’re just not attractive to me.” they said, “a person like you will get eaten up by wolves. you had better go home, where you can hide.” and the Boy Without a Penis, starving, began to wonder, for the first time, about power. the Boy began to wonder, for the first time, about rage. stories began to blossom. crimson-coloured between its thighs.

  i am with you

  in Rockland

  where a storyteller

  is screaming our names

  i am with you

  in Rockland

  and your skin tastes

  like rebellion

  the Boy With No Penis began to put sharp things in the place where a penis could have been. it started with pushpins. then thumbtacks needles and then knives. a collection of razor words to carve the shape of the truth of its desires. the Boy ran through alleys and climbed gates and stole what it needed at night. it learned to fight like a wild thing to wait in the dark for the predators to come and stab them with the blades it kept hidden in itself. it listened to the echoes of the howling of the wolves and wish-whispered to the moon, “make me dangerous. make me strong. make me untouchable. make me whole.”

  i am with you

  in Gomorrah

  where angels are raining fire

  i am with you

  in Gomorrah

  with a mouthful of ashes in my kiss

  they hunted the Boy With No Penis. hunted it the way they hunt wolves. with poison and cages and torches and guns but they never found it. never caught it. never killed it they never could. they tell terrifying stories about the things it does in the dark. “it makes love to monsters,” they murmured, “it eats small children and runs a drug-smuggling gang and keeps a machine gun cocked in its crotch.” some of the stories are obviously false. some of them are true. some of them are becoming true now. the Boy With No Penis is waiting, is watching is biding its time. a pack of wolves runs, howling prophecies at its back. it is waiting for strange and rare creatures who have always known its name. it is waiting for time to tell. stars to fall. war to start. it is waiting for monstersand for Moloch. the signs of the bones. it is waiting for you.

  i am with you in blood i am with you in ashes

  i am with you in memory

  i am with you in dust

  i am with you

  i am with you

  i am with you

  we are here

/>   good communication

  someday, I’m going to finish writing down everything I mean to say. on that day, i will be finished with language. forever and anyone who wants to communicate with me will have to have totally perfected the art of touching without causing pain.

  we did not ask for

  girl, we are both grown now

  but i still remember you

  young in your white dress

  the silver earrings you wore,

  sunlight scrutinizing your face and the asphalt

  of the schoolyard

  the day you told me you’d been raped.

  your face so pale i thought you looked dead

  the story swirling out of your mouth like smoke

  to fill the air between us

  eddying between my lips, staining

  my throat and tongue.

  girl, i cried that day

  not just for you

  but for me.

  felt the alchemy of your words

  alter my body at the cellular level

  a prophecy

  i knew then that the future

  would not be kind

  and in hindsight, it was true.

  girl, we are both grown,

  and the years have not been gentle.

  today i wear a white dress

  and silver earrings

  in the rain

  in memory, not just of you

  but of me

  and all the stories – like smoke, like ghosts, like magic –

  lost between us

  and these rapeable bodies

  we did not ask for.

  downtown beastside

  when you die

  i will be chopping vegetables

  when you die