Ray Hsu




2006.

            Buys own jacket.

2002.

            School.

Loved concretely.

            Memorizes.

2001.

            School.

Insomnia.

1996.

            Survived.

School.

Starts writing.

Wore dad’s jacket.

1995.

            First.

            First.

            Starts.

1992.

            Best friend.

Parents begin slide back into working class.

1990.

            Running in the family.

1987.

            Plans to become teacher.

1986.

            Starts writing.

1985.

            Sister is born.

            Picture is taken.

            Starts drawing.

1978.

            Toronto General.

T A K E I jump at it. My suit is white.		Y O U R They stare. They sit. The stage is bare.
S E A T S One brings a drink. Drops cling to air and let the glass go. The air shines. They want to sit. They stop they sit. How did it start oh		P L E A S E yes the lights went up. The snow the wood the glass the stage your eyes I jump.

on a day we meet to walk

¾  Robert Frost

(Offstage)

between you and me does not allow us

to be us. You demand to be you. To be useful,

be yourself. We are you and me

all day. We take care of each other.

We are worried about you and me.

1.

In some Vodou dances, two houngan mirror each other’s movements.

I will learn what it was like to be in Haiti after the Marines left.

What it was like to need a nation that both made you and held you back.

What was it you couldn’t write in those times?

Images of your experience reveal you.

2.

But my poems will pray each day.

A part of me will grow with and against you.

Either I channel you or a part of me, I won’t know.

You would refuse to be my muse.

You have never been quiet or distant.

You have always been defiantly alive.

3.

You have been dead for forty-five years but I need your help.

You are one of our most talented oracles. You tell us as much as you would fool us.

Let me be an oracle too. Let me turn what I read and see and hear, as an apprentice turns to you.

Let us shake our rattles to each other.

When I look in the mirror, who will that be?

*

((the water (moves in directions)

is contradictory) (it crosshatches)

(a fire

inches below the surface)

surfaces) (the water tells

our reflection)

(cold) (inches from the surface)

(my smudged glasses turn

the lights (of Christmas)

into auras)

(we three dream

out by the crosshatches we are contradictory)

(we three

(give up language

as hunters)

give up their language)

(something inches below the surface

inches above the surface))