Literary Yard

Search for meaning

By: Patrick Tong

after K-Ming Chang & Topaz Winters

Let us, my father reminds me in our bedroom / kitchen /
lobby. Let us forcep the facts, a forensic of friends,
first-timers, and foes. Let us brief over the bygone. Once,
for some weeks, my father took a tent to a tennis academy,
padded his leftovers with some griptape. Packed photographs
into a ball can. Let us draw from the water coolers, he
says. Let us imagine the courts as a raft. America—
where cherry blossoms collect in the rivers like a cemetery.
Where no story is without its lockers of loathing.

At the store, my family purchases a magnet, Sacramento
skyline, undefined like a closure. Let us stand besides
the fridge later, release the souvenir into sight. We’ll watch
as it imitates an immigration, hitching onto the metallic
handle like an opportunity. For now, let us tuck the
engraving in our jackets. Let the pickpocketers pass
and pellet. My father owns a wallet of languages, a shuffle
of bilingual cards that will be declined. I imagine him before
I was born, coloring his only money into a visa, his native
tongue past its expiration date and English the new-shine
Mastercard. Let nobody caddie this country. America—
where a government has surrendered the ground to
leglock. Where we lance and label, laminate the ladle of
loss.

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