Ba Ba COOKING

Father frostbitten by the universe Cradles me with the same defiance

Sun Wukong held a Heavenly Peach. Daring the universe to tell him to stop,

Smelling of sesame oil. When cooking, Father wears his apron like Niulang wearing his cowhide

As if this gray apron Imprinted with the red-haired Wendy’s logo From my brother’s brief stint as a cook

Could carry him light-years away Across this untranslatable gap.

Because what is Father But absence when becomes blood. Bleeds With my every mangled Because his body

Hewed from yellow silk was never Meant to understand mine. But whenever he cooks,

Humming that Chinese song Whose name I never asked,

Oil puckering, opening Szechuan peppers Like a lover, Father performs a seance

Calling magpies from the multiverse, And the yawning migration from Altair

To Vega, from Charlotte to Shijiazhuang, becomes a bone shorter.