Who does not spy for
the ancestors like
the Kitchen God
and who fills
the Mary-Pieta niche
in my psyche.
Wanted: A hard-working
goddess who’ll roll up
her silken sleeves,
shrug and forgive,
who’ll wear her heart
on her flowing sleeves.
Her face must blend
kind, tranquil and pretty
to seduce me into
unmasking my better self.
The statue stood in
a sculptor-owned store
in seaside Hoi An in a land
where Guan Yin rules.
A mermaid wisp of a girl
surrounded by deities
declared her brother had
carved it. She asked
where I had come from
before releasing a price.
Was her quote justice,
payback or both?
I only counter-bid
once under her
mahogany gaze.
Mao Tse-Tung excused
his war, “When the lips
are gone, the teeth
are cold.”
Bloody biting cold.
Nixon opposed
“the domino effect.”
Behind the gate,
he tilted the dominos
and loaded the die.
Guan Yin came home
shrouded in plastic
like a war bride.
After a week on Oklahoma’s
blowing umber plains,
she cracked down
her front in the dryness.
The finer the features,
the deeper the cleft.
Guan Yin is the goddess of mercy. She is a lesser Buddhist goddess and the only female in that pantheon.
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