At 7:30, an uncle wheeled out
a tin-clad trolley with
deep-fried rice cakes
which grannies picked up for breakfast.
The soap gurgling down the alley
is louder now; the neighbors
battering their clothes
say what sounds to me
like my language. Back then it was foreign
while Dad’s teeth
clenched and unclenched
from work
or despair . . .
                                                               This was an alley
where fashion loitered
in the 1940s, colonial style
and the blooming patterns
on qípáo bullied
a kid like me,
a different
kind of bullying
from what they did to the “kid,”
aged forty, with cerebral palsy,
shouting up and down
the winding staircase.

I wish I had his perfect Shanghainese.
My teacher’s spectacles
refracted blame
I was slow to understand.
I was reading
Das Kapital. For what?
The parasol trees,
shuffling tiles of lily
on overhead mahjong tables:
the gambling involved
little,
a grown-up’s joy

in a world where I traded
my last toys
for adulthood,
the nameless store owner
shaking his head, as if
now, when I stand
in line, telling the customs
officer the purpose of my visit . . .