the blueshift journal

My grandmother kneaded at a powdery ball of

Dough until it turned translucent and heavy under

The kitchen lights, settling onto the table like the

White insides of a mussel, the raw pear body of it

Folded in cabbages to steam, a Lunar New Year

Of baby fat, hanging ducks, legends of lotus feet

Unwrapped and blunted under a plum harvest moon.

 

My grandma cradled the dough in the warm space

Between her palm and her hip, and I remembered

That she, at my age, was much softer than I am now.

Her face, a blotch of flushed dimples and cheeks in

Old photos, almost unrecognizable: blurred mouth

Swimming, hair pulled back sexless. Perhaps this

Means that she too was foolish once before, gaze not

 

Yet a surrender. But still, she was a good daughter,

Good really meaning a soft daughter, someone who

Had forgotten that to be vulgar means to be unafraid.

Days beyond just yesterday, she was a new mother,

Unprepared and still too childish to give for a baby

In blind faith. Today, it is different. She teaches me

To make steamed buns, glutinous dumplings of a land

 

Where girls used to leave their homes like smog, the

Traditions of New Year bounded by yellow clay, their

Bodies, red veils, a ringing procession. But today, my

Grandmother laughs easily at the watery nubs of flour

In between my fists, tells me how dumplings used to

Be the only monument of a woman’s creation. But

Today, these cakes are our heritage reborn, and in it,

 

We are unburied, one by one: vulgar daughters, old

Mothers, and hope for the New Year.