PRODUCTION NOTES

By Sarah Feng

Because who could cleave to one body when so many are soluble to the touch? Place the birdcage by the sill, erect dead reefs into white dogs, stun the men warming their hands in the streets with the deadbolt of the light. Stage, set. Lurch toward apartment windows, wink at the acidic skateboards scraping by without their riders. Nearly crash. Ever seen a bicycle wheel get punched through? I have—& all the strings pucker out at the edges, a mouth tipped with razors in self-defense. All these backdrops fade flat without the light of a camera lens. What I mean to say is the first time your father leaves, you’ll see Mother sleep in a tub of hot, alkaline milk, while the overturned urinal and the spokes of the wheel spin slowly over the sink.

Creep to the doorway and hear her, whale-boned & whiplashed, tears suckling the corrosive suds. Help her rise from the pouring steam and drive to the fields of her youth. The scene will shift: waxwings, screaming red. Grandmother, where is? You think you have asked this before. Here I stumble into frame: lips twinned to still-developing screen on downstage, I walk large enough to crush the buried buds of microphones, the grass shining sun-white with poppies that bare their teeth at us. Is everyone the same type of kind? The field raises its hackles. Does your hand feel like a moth when I brush it? Look. In the distance, a water tower and a blank road sign. As furnished and articulate as a movie set. Lovely, how lovely, touch your hair here & here & here. I have heard this somewhere—before the night markets, the velveteen palaces, the plastic birds lying bruised and dozing in cages, before the tickets to America, before the nights we spent enameling this reflection in my eye, my mother danced on a fire escape limned by black fire, and you glowed bright with the silhouette of a camera.

What I mean to say is I wish we could film ourselves and watch the tape play again & again & again.