妈祖 Flotsam
Nikola Ma
Blood red paper pockets
fleshy fluorescent notes within,
the smell of money. Taste–
sharp sacrificial copper.
Mao Zedong stares
a dozen faces frowning
I mirror him and reap her bounty.
—
Dark bobbing head
miniscule, midst vivid
oily cobalt sap, I hasten.
Anxiety on tongue, turpentine toast.
She is floating further.
Lonely jetsam. God punches
the surface, a toddler in tantrum.
I slip off my shoes and hesitation
wriggles into sodden earth,
these desperate rootless, fruitless
weedy toes. I watch
an elderly couple take turns
twin eggs boiling in a waterless
pot. Hopping up and down
they gesture towards her
– cracking– as I dive in.
Such torment to keep
taut legs and bubbling lungs
to surface, pushed by thoughts
of snapping jaws and tendrils
whose master would roar in waves
to deafen me before they
pull a helpless mute
down, down
into the frigid blue.
We meet. Her almond gaze is
tenantless –swallowed irises– I
touch her. She huffs, twitches,
remnant nerves of muscle, fat.
The ocean sways our bodies; souls.
My eyes squeeze closed, and it’s brief,
but far away on Neptune
I become fish in an alien sea.
Wrinkled half-life, halfway done.
Middle-aged. Asian.
She clutches her purse.
I entwine myself to pull
and beg hungry currents;
Osmosis of Spirit, no, spit us up
yellow. Retch the wretched sour.
We take nothing from the deep.
Jellyfish swarm our legs
gelatinous, globulous lanterns,
ghosts. I drag this cargo, frantic.
She is stiff and I think to a doll
I had, whose drenched
and sticky tangles lick,
forgotten in a childhood bath.
I haul her body and heave
on searing ground. Near drowned
she gasps; or quietly suffocates
and smells of lemon, salt, and butter.
—
Hero’s lunch. They. Husband, wife.
Fresh from the mainland
the doll dries. Morphs to frizz, lines,
a Gucci tracksuit.
Broken she awash on glassy sands
whose porcelain, salted shell hands
like tissue paper faintly
brush mine in thanks.
Attempted suicide, unspeakable taboo
she cowers in her glass box
his hand
claws her shoulder, the other
presses a crimson
paper pocket
to my palm – it burns,
his golden watch brushes
my wrist – it burns.
My parents enlivened by my efforts
Chinese father proud, but never proud.
Beaming, a lighthouse mouth agape
shovelling food between breaths
obese engine of heavy sweat.
My western mother silver headed nods
daft deaf to the tonalities of mandarin.
Shots of rice wine; the men talk
as pillars of steamer baskets
teeter around us all
empty black, mammalian eyes echo
scattered amongst this circle we make.
A sashimi lobster lies sedated
it spins onstage, raw carcass
and incarnadine head bobbing
body ripped to naked shreds
such geometric, artful slices.
Cardinal pleasure.
Upon dead head, bacteria writhe on paltry
inky spheres who twitch.
Flickering witness.
She spends her time looking into them.
Recognition sparks as I chew
a square of epithet flesh.
马美丽 Mǎ Měilì/
Nikola Ma is not a writer, but a witness. She collects the Beautiful. Tragic. Silent. Amusing. The swings in between. She is a reflecting pool for readers to peer into. You don’t need to know Nikola beyond her love for poetry. Mirror, mirror.
