San Diego Reader

• When we first met he had nothing,
• naked as a brand-new lamb.
• Fresh dew shimmered on the wool of his back.
• Then, slowly, my small apartment filled
• with meaningful gimcrack of his past.
• And then, his parents’ baggage...

• First, his mother’s small leathers:
• prim, expensive, with a good name,
• filled to the brim, ready to explode.
• Took three friends to sit them closed.

• Then his father’s soft naugahyde:
• one special piece, a suit-bag hung
• over the doorjamb like a fresh carcass
• picked open by private vultures.
• And he and his sisters were the last
• worms to clean the ribs.

• I beg the question: who is host, who is guest?
• Who the eater, who the eaten?
• And in the depth of night,
• in the wake of our dreams,
• I reach out my arms to embrace what is left.

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has received many awards for her poetry, including a National Endowment Fellowship and a Stegner fellowship from Stanford University. Her novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, was published by Norton in 2009. Presently, she is a professor of creative writing at San Diego State University. “His Parents’ Baggage” is from her collection, The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty, published by Milkweed editions: Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions 1994, 2009. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions (milkweed.org). The author’s photograph is by Don Romero.