Dew, thus early morning Father, would you like the salt? Pho. FW

Eat rice sweet With relished meditation FW

Polish your name Stand beside yourself Don’t listen for the echo. FW

Trust me, first born, for luck And I’m a believer. Stars in our eyes. FW

Heaven is a century Why the dog’s bark Is righteous. FW

Selflessness Opened the laundry Before it could speak. FW

DIASPORA DRIFT The spore in diaspora drifts Pacific ocean bridge Aleutian jetsam jargon tongued a China in the heart that new strange grammar home dispersed as homes this dizzy mimesis of the local golden gate entrance and exit same hinges sprung to the lock of your immigration cell echo in between the din of jargon tongue “You mucka hi! Thloong you!” When I first immigrated to Vancouver some local Chinese – they took me to see Chinatown. I thought – this is not China, this does not represent Chinese culture.Jin ZhangWho he coming through the door all dressed up in the Master’s clothes suit and tie all smiles who is this Charlie where’s he from and where’s he going caught between two bowls of juk bored with floating coast to coast but bound and busy working in between the Pleistocene I didn’t think I’d ever get enough to go back but I got lucky at the race track at Hastings Park and bought a ticket on a steamer going to the Philippines and from there I could get another boat to Hong Kong.Jimmy GeeCharlie is a China These are the papers and the money on the table singing  Charlie Chim Chong Say Wong Leung Chung the door has swung the table’s turned they make the fridges stoves the clothes out of the pod the “i” has drifted become the Tiger burning bright is this the Master’s mirror the door that gleams but doesn’t wobble the neurons shifted in reverse? I tried to get back to Canada four years later and it was hard. They raised the Head Tax to $500. I had to leave, without my wife and children, before they raised the Tax even higher. I told them I was just going to the Philippines and I would earn some money and send it home. They didn’t know I went to Canada. I couldn’t bring them over so I ended up marrying a white woman, the cashier in the café.Kwan Wah Confucius say reflection is the noblest but imitation is the easiest now the slippery glass of payback flips the menu drips and drifts the geopolitics of coolie loot worth all those rented muscle years Living in Shanghai in a small apartment with my parents – I can never afford to get married. So I’m into mountain bikes. I went to Sedona Arizona on an extreme tour with my bike friends last year. This year we’re going to Australia. What about Canada? Where should we go?Yiyang our dream’s been coded the track’s been laid the CPR a shuddered reflex of dementia we all want that rice and all the ginger too the future is nostalgia another “cutting edge” of the vanishing present These are the gates and you can either kick them open or walk through in silence Same dif! TEA On the other side of the doors, hardly audible to the customersechoes a jargon of curses, jokes, and crytic orders Stack a hots!  Half a dozen fry!Hot beef san! Fingers and tongues all over the place jibe and swear You mucka high! Thloong you!   Shouts in the kitchen—Fish an! Side a fries!Over easy! On brown! Ham an‘… 2 soft under glassGrilled cheese sanmixee grill! 

a China in the heart

FW

Pacific ocean bridge

that new strange grammar

Aleutian jetsam jargon tongued

home

The spore in diaspora drifts

Or were they gentlemen

Waiting, 

Were they just a bunch of old men

With one lung

waiting.

a John A. Macdonald mongrel, an Onderdonk question mark,

 just another last spike.

All dressed up and clean-shaven with no where to go,

a huckster, a leper, a depraved opium addict, 

a nignog, an Ishmaelite, a cooley, a yellow belly

a pest, a wanton cyprian, a chinkie-chinkie Chinaman, 

a troublemaker, that one, a yellow peril, an Amor de Cosmos Pariah, a Celestial,

a Royal Commission cuckoo, an Asiatic Exclusion League problem,

— just another hungry ghost, 

a slant-eyed devil, a Mongolian, a heathen, bone-scraping ghoul,

Hear the click clack of the jade and ivory mahjong pieces

Belongs to earth.

Above the canopy of Maple trees

Is flat and shines

This black hair

A family portrait.

Especially when you show

Don’t mention yourself

Not the apple of John A’s greedy eye

The real last spike is yet to be driven.

That head tax’s just a rusty nail

But that brown nail’s been here forever