ten years ago I felt humiliated often
as if life was one long humiliation --


for the first time in year I flew home to Shanghai
not exactly my home but my father’s home
in the airport in the foreign citizens line
hahahahahahah the customs agent says to me
ahahahahahahaahahaha
hahahahahahahaha
hahahahahahahahahahaahaha
laughter a difficult form of mutual recognition
one that women do not appreciate enough
this woman and me hand to hand
passing a blue passport
mano e mano
it’s not worth it, is it worth it?
who among us has not thought
and stopped, felt the body
through an eye through a key
hole, through a rotating cylinder, magnified syringe, 
the body, a blobular de-sexed outline
long haired though, to be a woman
hidden behind the blob the AI calculation of
probable 2ndary sex characteristics
measuring no genital, just crotch, over square thickly lined:
wrist & butt anomalys.


What am I to the  “security state”?


my father in china drives drunk and flashes his American passport
a man whose face my face is
water colors like blood colors & watercolor echo
we are mountain ppl vague affiliation to the tang dynasty general
my grandfather claimed
the mountain’s deep stretch marks across the map
picking up pieces of straw and burningsoldering
representational image on a wood block
new volcanic formations with jutting purpose of mongloid jaw
new to the “brotherhood of man” – google it, a post new deal educational video
then the family of man in the 1960s, a “democratic surround”
this passing ideology blows smoke
woman on a bicycle ridein intrudes the deli,
“american spirits please”
ok, and i see her down the block
big tall minnesotan looking woman, jennifer, molly,
Asphodel, margaret, 
lend me a cig from your pack.


everybody in china is descended from 100 tribes
does it matter? I look into my chinese lover’s face
a face from a different tribe, freckled, and so forth
ancestors never crossed path except in trade or commerce
slavery or war; in the woods of middlesex fells tho
the grey-green-white cedar strapping wildly in the wind
useful for canoes
or in mount auburn cemetery, where she steps
through a medieval turret to the top of the surround
and enfranchised with the design
(of frederick w. olmstead)
(of central park & prospect park & greenwood cemetery)
many tree tops diverse species covering
the dead and their stoned vanity,
so we can walk amongst them
the corrective impulse in abeyance reading the plates
w their latin names – studying, the lucidness of studying
in adjacent carrels in the dead man’s library
merely tunnels for the robber barons of knowledge
stealing is procedural sequential execution as a sport
a premier athlete her family uses that connection to
enhance their business ones face hangs the light
of ones proximal relatives
daughter mother son brother
i could be her younger brother
parked in a car late at night
discussing family business
men curving -- around the corner -- peering
just normal business discussion
passing as a stale, warm, moist, tender scent between
desks, “you are my desk mate”,
a children’s song which recalls
ones proximity to another. Which my father sings
drunk at a karaoke bar,
holding a young woman, who is not my mother,
selling machines to men who love machines.


in such study, and such snobbishness,
when i study i am shy and strange
i am coarse and smart at the same time
i am enthralled with Principias and stroking an altered view
i am looking out the shelving through an inverted gap
of the evergreen review
of Minotaur
what did that man scratching his beard in dongting lake with a fishing pole
reciting Tang poetry in the Ming dynasty
have on me?
look the shy and strange person on the other side
under different chemistry
by my standards of superior/inferior
watching mysterious skin
lying down on the bed with your legs hanging off the side
look down
ruined by the french new wave
the screen face 50 or so human faces enfrente
in front of me exposing me
look at me
i’d like to ruin you in a french new wave way
the way my sexuality was reconstructed by the french new wave
class division produces sex
the thief with his bourgeois girlfriends
the carjacker with his bourgeois girlfriends
the marxist with his two girlfriends
for a man to lay himself open to domination
through class division
on the table of his need to be fed
praised providentially special
as a night walker discovers the great awakening
as though a young roasted pig
for four hours extremely cool about philosophy
hair curling around his face over philosophy
to “the mother and the whore”
a small hazing ritual
difficult and wielding power one is afforded
by virtue of ones talent.


the cops say, lao wai,
go go go don’t want trouble with you
no point in arguing with American hegemony
better to exert the pressure of hegemony
disappearances at the periphery
drawing a perfect circle a type of meditation
of the wrist
like a changeup or a slider
swinging at a wild pitch
he loosens his wrist
snorts like an animal
fidgets and seals his cuff links
driving into suzhou
the canals where thousands of lovers
looked at each other
said
i have not been eating bc of you
i have not been sleeping bc of you
nor have i and will I so
let us consider diving first into the green turbid water
larp as my concubine,
i will take your photo in front of a green screen.


in America one is equipped
Heidegger says, equipment is given by the world
and ready at hand
you’re just jealous of my equipment
one boy says to the other
holding a new Rawlings Heart-of-the-Hide
and tugging his
The curiously equipped
has to be born wet and slippery
bouncing and crying
cartilaginous into the world.

lives in Red Hook with his dog poopy xue, and is learning to fish spin and fly.