SHIRLEY GEOK-LIN LIM

Born in Malacca, Malaysia, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim (b. 1944) was raised
by her Chinese father and attended missionary schools. Although her
first languages were Malay and the Hokkin dialect of Chinese, she was
able to read English by the time she was six. Lim emigrated to the
United States after college, settling eventually in California. Her many
books of poetry include Monsoon History: Selected Poems and What the
Fortune Teller Didn’t Say.

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Riding into California

If you come to a land with no ancestors
to bless you, you have to be your own
ancestor. The veterans in the mobile home
park don't want to be there. It isn't easy.
Oil rigs litter the land like giant frozen birds.
Ghosts welcome us to a new life, and
an immigrant without home ghosts
cannot believe the land is real. So you're
grateful for familiarity, and Bruce Lee
becomes your hero. Coming into Fullerton,
everyone waiting at the station is white.
The good thing about being Chinese on Amtrack
is no one sits next to you. The bad thing is
you sit alone all the way to Irvine.







What the fortune teller didn't say

When the old man and his crow
picked the long folded parchment
to tell my fortune at five,
they never told about leaving,
the burning tarmac and giant wheels.
Or arriving--why immigrants
fear the malice of citizens
and dull shutterings of those
who hate you whatever you do.

My mother did not grip
my hand more possessively.
Did I cry and was it corn
ice-cream she fed me because
the bird foretold a husband?
Wedded to unhappiness,
she knew I would make it,
meaning money, a Mercedes
and men. She saw them shining

in the tropical mildew
that greened the corner alley
where the blind man and his
moulting crow squatted
promising my five-year-old hand
this future. Or large faith
she thrust a practical note
into the bamboo container,
a shiny brown cylinder
I wanted for myself, for
a cage for field crickets.

With this fortune my mother bought,
only the husband is present,
white as a peeled root, furry
with good intentions, his big nose
smelling a scam. Sometimes,
living with him, like that
black silent crow I shake
the cylinder of memory
and tell my fortune all over again.
My mother returns, bearing
the bamboo that we will fill
with green singing crickets.







Learning to love America

because it has no pure products

because the Pacific Ocean sweeps along the coastline
because the water of the ocean is cold
and because land is better than ocean

because I say we rather than they

because I live in California
I have eaten fresh artichokes
and jacarandas bloom in April and May

because my senses have caught up with my body
my breath with the air it swallows
my hunger with my mouth

because I walk barefoot in my house

because I have nursed my son at my breast
because he is a strong American boy
because I have seen his eyes redden when he is asked who he is
because he answers I don't know

because to have a son is to have a country
because my son will bury me here
because countries are in our blood and we bleed them

because it is late and too late to change my mind
because it is time.







Self-portrait

I want to write a self-portrait
like Rosario Castellanos
who knew herself so well
she could knife herself in the back
and laugh. She knew how she
appeared to the world, her desire
awry like a misplaced wig.
But I cannot see myself.
My eye is mercurial.
I flake, the particulars
drizzling with deformations.
I know how to be happy
but lack the means.
Unlike my friend Rosario
my skin is thin. Inside its bag
are late-night monsters
impossible to describe.
They watch even as my green-
stem son eat noodle soup.
I have more desires than
there are wigs in the world:
to be what I am not.
Also to be myself. To speak
many languages, each
as useful as this one
I wipe my tears with.
I want to be good and better
than I am. I want to sway
like the swaying palms
and hold heavy books in my hands.

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