clarahsu – Page 36

At the Reading, a Cell Phone Rings

Nicole Henares and her class at Poets with Trees Reading, 2007

It rings, in spite of the invitation to turn it off. It rings during a TV taping session. It rings in a memorial service, a funeral, a wedding, a concert. It rings and rings. Somehow a cell phone will triumph over all precautions.

It rings in the bowels of a handbag, hidden among keys and wallet and check books. It rings in one of the pockets of a jacket. When it finally surfaces it demands to reveal the caller’s ID. Before it is turned off, it gives off its last bit of sound. Whooosh. Goodbye. Ding-a-ling-ling.

Nicole Henares brought her high school English class to the Poets with Trees Reading. My nephew Jonathan was in her class. He arrived, to my delight, with his father (my step-brother John) to the Sutro Heights Park. Jonathan and his classmates picked out a tree, decorated it and began their reading. In the middle of Jonathan’s reading John’s cell phone began to ring.

“Hello.” He said. It was his wife. They spoke, trying to work out some logistics in transporting their other children from one activity to another.

Johnathan kept reading his poem. John kept talking on the phone. Father’s voice. Son’s voice.

“DADDY!” Jonathan, frustrated, stopped reading. We waited.

“Oh, I have to go now. Jonathan is reading.” Did John realize he had been seduced?

Yes. The cell phone has that kind of power.

The Poet’s Potluck

poet picnic — Poets with Trees at Sutro Heights Park

Cooking, like putting carrots and lentils together with purple onions, juxtaposing colors and textures, infusing liquid and spices, gives me immense pleasure. Once a month I get a chance to impose my taste on my friends. Sometimes they have to suffer through failed experiments, but that’s the nature of alchemy.

The Sunday salon potluck is always a spontaneous affair. Regulars like Steve Mackin always brings a fine cake, Stephanie Manning comes with her trusty cheese and crackers, Dan Brady with dips and chips and Carlos Ramirez, fruits, and sometimes flowers. Food appears and disappears on the table. Poets are hearty eaters.

My stepmother came to one of the poet’s potlucks at the Sutro Heights Park in 2006. Being a traditional Chinese woman she wanted to make sure everyone was well fed and made a big tray of soy-sauce chicken legs. She watched with surprise delight as the tray was promptly emptied. She didn’t understand the poems, but she understood the smiles and thank yous and the handshakes she received that day.

The Yellow House On University Mound

The quaint yellow house situated on Bacon and University Streets stands alone and apart, a sentinel guarding the huge water basin that occupies many blocks of the neighborhood. Wild flowers dot its little garden behind a white fence. The landscape is not manicured but has a ruffled appearance, like a miniature English garden. I often wonder if the house is occupied by gnomes of a fairytale.

On a recent walk around the neighborhood Dore and I open the gate and knock on its door. The woman who answers the door wears her hair in two long braids. The man behind her is ruddy and good natured. No, they are not gnomes but city employees who take care of the reservoirs. The house is their office. They give us a quick tour: wood floor, big windows, cathedral ceiling, open kitchen and a community room for neighborhood meetings, all quite worldly. They tell us our reservoir is one of the largest. It supplies 25% of the water in the city.

The mystique of the yellow house is broken, but its charm remains.

Hey Vern

Vern. Hey Bro! I have not forgotten to thank you, my muscle-man, the guy who shows up when I need him, who takes care of me and my daughter Julia. No one ever messes with us when we walk down the street with you. That killer look. That body. Those thick tattooed arms, those calloused fists. And now, the BEARD!

I didn’t keep my promise to bake you a pie a week. But you took Julia under your wing and taught her how to punch. I really thought the ballerina would turn into a boxer.

Our girl is grown now. You are the night cat in the clubs. I stay home and write poetry. When we get together we invariably reminisce how you reined that little wild pinto in. I eat my salad while you chomp down your meatloaf. I always enjoy our walks, especially the one down Mission Street at night, admiring the old cinemas on each block that have turned into parking garages or vegetable markets. Who could have imagined in their glorious days that they would have such ignominious ending? We just keep going. That’s the best we can do. Oh, and keep deep-frying the turkeys. You know Avotcja loves them.

Photo by Vivencio Peralta.

Avotcja, Medicine Woman

Avotcja! I called her when my daughter (18 at the time) ran away from home. Avotcja. Not only her name was magical but I knew she was the strong woman who I could lean on. I needed magic and a miracle. She stayed with me the whole way through, advising, warning, consoling, encouraging me, the distraught mother.

When my daughter came back I took her to the Sacred Grounds reading. Avotcja read a poem. She pulled me aside afterward, “I don’t know if it helps but I put the poem out there for her to hear it.”

Six years later her poem is still out there doing its magical transformation as I watch my daughter grows into a functional young woman celebrating her 24th birthday today.

Photo by Cathy Cade.

Vacation with Uncle Jo

When I was home from college during summer vacation, Uncle Jo, my dad’s second brother who was a church minister from Los Angeles, came up to San Francisco for a little time out. He wanted to go to Reno and asked my dad to accompany him. Dad didn’t particularly want to go but agreed after I said I would drive them.

After checking in at the hotel, Dad took one look around the casino and went upstairs to take a nap. Uncle Jo pulled out a twenty dollar bill and exchanged it into coins. I watched him inserting a coin into a slot machine and pulled the handle.

“Uncle Jo,” I said, ” I thought a church minister is not supposed to gamble.”

“I’m not gambling. I’m playing. There is a difference. ” His big owlish eyes were fixated on the three images of fruit that have rolled to a stop. “I play slowly, until all the coins are gone. If I win money I get to play longer. Twenty is my limit.”

“What if some of your parishioners see you here? They may not know that you’re just playing and may start a rumor.”

“That’s why I’m in Reno, and not in Las Vegas.” Uncle Jo flashed me a great smile.

I left Uncle Jo to his recreation. When all his coins were gone he came over and watched me play until all my coins were gone.

“Uncle Jo, we still have half a day here. What else would you like to do?”

“Take a nap, go to the buffet and watch the show.”

“The show with nude girls?”

“Of course.” He laughed again. “What else?”

Jewel In The Haystack

After a reading at Sacred Grounds, Dan Brady and I took the N Judah to Irving to catch the 44 bus. We were talking about poetry when a Chinese man (about our age) looked up from his reading and smiled at me.

“Hello.” He said. “You work at Clarion. I work at The Pot Sticker down Waverly, remember?”

Sometimes it was hard for me to recognize people when they appear out of context. But I realized he was the waiter who took my take-out orders.

“My name is David. You go to poetry readings? I like poetry too.”

David spoke very good English. I told him we used to have poetry open mikes at Clarion. I would have invited him if I had known.

“What are you reading, David?” He showed me the cover of his book. It was Carl Jung. I was blown away. All the years I worked in Chinatown I had not met one person who had the slightest interest in poetry, psychology or philosophy. David and I could have been great friends. I told him I had sold Clarion. He too, looked disappointed.

I had too many questions but we were approaching our stop.

“Come to the reading at Sacred Grounds.” Dan and I urged him. He couldn’t. He had dinner shift on Wednesdays.

I saw David again some months later, at Eric’s, another Chinese restaurant on Church Street. He was a little distant when he saw me, and because he was working, we couldn’t talk too much. The last time I went to the restaurant, he had stopped working there.

Poems On Walls

AngelIslandImmigrationStation-3 — Click to read more about the Immigration Station

It was a bright sunny day in 2003 when my cousin Ronald and I took the ferry to Angel Island. Ronald was visiting from Flint, Michigan, and was curious about my newfound passion in poetry. I told him what I know about the Immigration Station on Angel Island, that between 1910-1940, many Chinese immigrants were detained on the island while their papers were being processed. Squalid conditions, humiliation, anxiety of deportation and hopelessness led to sickness and suicides. Desperate for an outlet, the detainees carved poems on the walls.

A short hike from the ferry dock led us to the Immigration Station. The lush vegetation, blue sky and bird songs were the making of paradise. I could not imagine suffering in such a pristine setting. We entered the living quarters. The floorboard and the walls seemed to be made of paper. Just things now, photos, information, artifacts…they did not stir me as I had expected to be stirred. And then I saw the poems on the walls. Most of them barely legible. But there they were, emerged from layers of old paint, reaching out, warning, reminding, retelling the inhuman treatment from one people to another. After three-quater of a century these words still carried a haunting vibration in the absence of their authors.

Ronald and I were quiet on our way back. Despite the gorgeous day, our hearts were heavy.

Meet Me At The Flagpoles

Daniel Bacon, author of Walking San Francisco On the Barbary Coast Trail took me on a walk once. We stopped by the Westin St. Francis to admired the historic Viennese grandfather clock. He told me the significance of the clock, that it was for generations a designated place for people to meet. Thus the phrase, “Meet me at the Clock.” was coined.

I told him there was such a spot in Hong Kong when I was growing up—the flagpoles on the Kowloon Peninsula where the Star Ferry docked. As a teenager I received mysterious letters once in a while. They were pen pal letters. Some came from far away places like France and Australia. But there were local ones too. At some point of the correspondence a photo was requested. I always felt squirmy and anxious as the letters usually stop after I sent the photo. Somehow I didn’t fit the dream that was on the other side.

One time I received letters in the form of poems. This was from a boy in Hong Kong. He wrote beautifully, classical, rhymed poems that melted my heart. I tried to find out who he was but none of my friends seemed to know such a person. Did he write these poems or did he copy them from books? It didn’t matter much to me. All I wanted was to keep receiving his letters.

Then the inevitable moment came, when he thought that we should meet. Where? At the flagpoles, of course. I went with a fatalistic attitude. Sometimes this kind of meeting turned out to be a set up, with friends sneaking around watching the date and then bursting into the scene. Knowledge of such meeting could also turn into gossip and I wouldn’t hear the end of it until the next victim was trapped.

I arrived at the agreed time. The flagpoles were never so visible. I didn’t see the poet. I didn’t see anyone that could have been the person who wrote those lovely poems. After five minutes I fled. As expected, I never heard from him again.

Photo by jymsn123.

Twenty Years, Twenty Poems

Steve Mackin at the SF Poetry TV Show. Click to watch.

At the end of the Thursday tarot soiree conversation turned to the internet and its effect on musicians. The prevalent file sharing culture is challenging copyrights. And if you protect and charge for your music chances are the audience will turn away from you and go to the ones that are giving out their music for free.

“Take Lady Gaga, for example,” our pianist host Richard said, “she was giving her songs out for free until she built up a large following. She makes her money from her tours.”

I think of my friend Steve Mackin, who is always generous in giving out his poems. Earlier in the year he read twenty poems in twenty minutes to commemorate his twenty years of writing poetry. That and his most recent reading were accompanied by free books that he painstakingly printed, collated and stapled together. I appreciate having the poems in my hands after a reading to savor at another time. By giving, Steve’s poems are in circulation. I don’t think anybody ever “burst” into a scene. It all takes hard work, and Steve is planting the seeds.