ABSTRACT
The diving board on which I sit overhangs the edge of the swimming pool, drained of its water. A concrete, kidney-shaped grave swollen with the legs of odd chairs, cracked tables, and a hundred aloe plants in black plastic tubs. This derelict yard backdrops a yellow tract house in Little Saigon, Minh-Quang, Temple of Shining Light, a freeway’s turn away from L.A., where helicopters buzz low, overtake highways, shopping malls, suburban tracts, Mexican territories, and swoop down Hollywood. Lowriders cruise the boulevards; pickups flood the streets. Driven by gunshots, I hit the floor. Am I wounded too? On the diving board, I unwrap my legs, locate elements of myself in air, earth and afternoon. Inside the temple a monk is chanting. His sutras unlock doors, release windows and walls, sweep past wooden eaves of the western house and alight upon aloes in the yard. I discard another layer of my life. A friend tells me that seven of his buddies have died of AIDS. No one wants to know. In Asian families, you just disappear. Your family rents a small room for you. They feed you lunch. They feed you dinner. Rice, fish, vegetables. At my feet, aloes thrust green spikes upwards from black dirt, promise to heal wounds and burns, to restore the skins luster. Pure light will arise over suburban roofs and power lines, illuminating the path of green aloes by which I return. I drink snow water that falls from high Sierra beaches, bleached by white shellcaps and whale bones. Petrified waves fathom the past and plumb the future. Deer tigers sables pandas gibbons lynx monkeys bite their tongues, rub their eyes in the red dust. The monk in the kitchen is cutting cabbages on the nicked formica table for supper. We must eat and drink in order to live.
