VANESSA Y. NIU

In Rural Yunnan, My Family Portrait is Taken in the Form of a Eulogy

Here above the gravel and construction 
and human grime I 
place a few sticks of multi-colored incense on my 
grandfather’s grave and imagine
him turning over with the rubbery smoke 
still in his lungs slowly seeping
into the tissue and blackening flesh wrung 
through with maggots and dirt—ripened flesh rots fast
—while my family passes around mandarins
and tangyuan and sweet sticky rice cakes 
on plates printed with images of mangos 
gifts from Chairman Mao from my grandfather’s time
as a factory worker
throwing sunflower seeds onto the old stone like offerings
the new grave planted like a tree in front of his grave has
blocked the sun from praying on his pine-littered soil as it had before
My mother takes its place and kneels and everyone
watches and takes turns and speaks to him
his children gather round and I feel rotten and look away because
I do not want to see the bruises on their necks and arms and backs
that have not healed That have become the colour of 
the fruit left over from our last visit to the grave
My hands still hurt, after all, they’re still red from the sting
of hot silver chopsticks—my family heirloom
—Lady Macbeth syndrome says the western psychiatrist
Macbeth is the son of Confucius, we joked on a summer eve
My mother’s breath condenses in the slit of sunlight 
that passes the grave in front of us, a unit, a compression of
limbs and eyes and sores and mouths
The family looks alike, says the western psychiatrist
Yes, my brother’s bruises are my sister’s are my uncle’s are my mother’s
are my grandmother’s who doesn’t show up today
nor last year and not the year before who laughed when he died
Macbeth asks me, standing across on the opposite side of 
the bed at night, asking me if I sees that
my face replicates that of each of the horrifying them,
that the parallel reds on my palms belong to them as much as to me
BELONGING he booms and Confucius murmurs filial piety
but I choose not to hear either anymore,
My mother’s voice dies down while the sunlight shifts and 
fades to the west
the mandarins are left on the cooling stone for my grandfather’s
maggots to finish off
and I take my mother’s hand
(we are silent on the ride home.) 

Vanessa Y. Niu is a second generation Chinese-American spoken-word and page poet who lives in New York City. She has written text for the modern composition scene at Juilliard and Interlochen, and can be found at the opera house, a slam-poetry session, or attending open physics lectures when not writing.