Do You Ever Get Bored of Chicken and Wine?

[A response poem to Persimmons by Li-Young Lee from the North American perspective]


I’ve never met you, [grandfather], only
Your ashes in a marble urn.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky,
We find the time to visit you.
We drive along the windy mountain road,
To your plot just off the bicycle path.
They run over your grave like a bicycle path.
Do you miss the safety of the shrine?

Do you ever get bored of chicken and wine?

We place a slip under a stone
And lay a feast before you on the grass,
White Styrofoam nestled in white plastic bags:
A bald chicken roosting there. Its eyes are closed, its skin
Full of goosebumps, like a chilly ghost.

Next, we pour the wine (“to impress your future in-laws…”)
Into little plastic cups. [Uncle] fans
The smouldering dollar bills; their ashes fly
Between the branches, dancing
Up to Heaven.

They say Heaven is a banquet table,
Ancestors gathered all around.
They laugh, they muse, they wait year round
For their boiled chicken and wine.
Old bones buried in a far-away land
Want for visits and chicken and wine.
For centuries, boiled chicken and wine.

Aren’t they bored of chicken and wine?


Tell me, have you ever tasted pizza
Or crab apple pie?
Is this something you would like
To try, now, in the Afterworld, descendants
Like roving taste buds,
Bringing you glimpses of present life?

If I burn you a letter, will you find it?
Would you read it? (Could you read it?)

Shall I write:
“Hello, [Grandmother],
I met you in a dream last night.
You sat, cross-legged, on the counter,
A young girl in pants,
And said you were thirsty.”

Shall I burn you a photo?

No—
a poem.

I shall burn for you poem.

I Don't Want to Read Sir Gawain

I don't care for what you had to say
six thousand years ago or

when you wanted to be god's son so badly or

when you thought that the world was flat
or when you thought dragons were among us.

I want to know what you think now.

Of all the worlds we could've traveled to
you decided to ship me to the past.

I feel like you're trying to tell me something.