Iron Goddess of Mercy

by Larissa Lai

Overview

Iron Goddess of Mercyby Lambda Literary Award winner Larissa Lai (for the novel The Tiger Flu) is a long poem that captures the vengeful yet hopeful movement of the Furies mid-whirl and dance with them through the horror of the long now. Inspired by the tumultuous history of Hong Kong, from the Japanese and British occupations to the ongoing pro-democracy protests, the poem interrogates the complicated notion of identity, offering a prism through which the term “Asian” can be understood to make sense of a complex set of relations. The self crystallizes in moments of solidity, only to dissolve and whirl away again. The poet is a windsock, catching all the affect that blows at her and ballooning to fullness, only to empty again when the wind changes direction. Iron Goddess of Mercy is a game of mah jong played deep into the night, an endless gamble.

Presented in sixty-four fragments to honor the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching, Iron Goddess of Mercy also borrows from haibun, a traditional Japanese form of travel writing in which each diary entry closes with a haiku. The poem dizzies, turns on itself. It rants, it curses, it writes love letters, but as the Iron Goddess is ever changing, so is the object of her address: a maenad, Kool-Aid, Chiang Kai-shek, the economy, a clown, freedom of speech, a brother, a bother, a typist, a monster, a machine, Iris Chang, Hannah Arendt, the Greek warrior Achilles, or a deer caught in the headlights.

Finally, a balm to the poem’s devastating passion and fury, Iron Goddess of Mercy is also a type of oolong tea, a most fragrant infusion said to have been a gift from the

compassionate bodhisattva Guan Yin.

Summoning the ghosts of history and politics, Iron Goddess of Mercy explores the complexities of identity through the lens of rage and empowerment.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551528441
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	518,816
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Larissa Lai won Lambda Literary’s Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists’ Prize in 2020. She is the author of three novels: Salt Fish Girl, When Fox Is a Thousand, and most recently, The Tiger Flu, which won a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, was named an Otherwise Honor Book, and was shortlisted for the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award. Her previous poetry books include Automaton Biographies. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Calgary where she directs the Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing.

Read an Excerpt

1.
Dear Maenad, meet me halfway at the crossroads where we played touch footsie our pedicures glistening bright in the moonlight. Dear Monad when you were my one and homely, we aired our uglies to ducklings wet as greenbacks aching for a border crossing. Dear Mynah parrotting the last politic, dear miner, I’m digging deep for gold, for diamond dust, asbestos, my best friend’s girl. Dear Moonie hugging the cult of the belt the boot of the bat the bear and the bull full of it sully my gully the grey bird rat of the sky screams dreaming of gullible burgers as the market door swings open to the grey and rainy. Dear Kool Aid, Dear Gut Rot, Dear Dead Head singing where have all the flowers gone? Dear Dust Bowl, Dear Chiang Kai Shek, Dear Shrek your smile green, your antennae scan the skies of our Distant Early Warning Line. Dear Monster Mash, tear me to shredded chicken, I’m so hungry I could cry. Dear Mufti, Dear Mourning has broken, dear token my best friend’s one and only, dear mayhem, dear Moonie howl at it while your vocal’s stoical, while the chord of your sword’s still sharp and dark as a clark’s inkling recording rust and rebar, tea and totals, Dear Mynah parroting the harp seal and munching flipper pie, Dear Miner staking your hot plot digging deeper where the white man’s dug before, I’ve been working on the stale road haunting the cross road where we burnt ghost money smoking the stairway to heaving boulders rolled from mountains dynamiting our break on through to the other’s mother the love of my lite flite blasting a rocketship to venus. Dear Dolly gosh golly implicated in the hog’s holly clearing brush for democracy’s prop prop propolis staging the metro’s underground for undocumented crossings while the bees buzz around your head til you can’t think straight and they’re measuring your cranium for uranium digging deeper than down for the black gold to bomb your ass to kingdom kum quat or some yung gai the vegetables of my digital LAN thirsty as a burst oil pipe skyping me in.


Seek Peace find Labour
Buzzing around Someone’s
Empty hive

2.

Dear Occupation, know your station wastin in Wong Nei Chung Gap blastin the mishap of opium’s concornucopia the dope of east asia co-prosperity no apology after the golly of america’s postwar reconstruction plus deduction paid by the rough stamp of made in japan vs made in china bullying fragrant harbour’s ever open shop, no stop even on sunday my hawker rushes her cart into hiding as cops bop your survival’s illegal watch the eagle and praise the rule of law always say uncle when sam comes knocking no flocking or swarming in hordes or perils stay feral and leave the critters to the army of uniforms british, japanese or prc occupation’s your vocation your relation makes a paste of yellow flesh here to do picky duty with fingers nimble till they stumble eyes precise until they slant the cant of burnout under factory lights burning special economic in sum jun, gow loong, chung king nest of my marginal brothers watering the swamp paved over in backwards rhetorics clean as the mean or mister blistering all my black-haired sisters down to the last drop of blood, pus, coffee or tea here’s glee here’s a plea my market’s stark as other blood marking nanking, manchukuo or hong kong on christmas day our modern christian praying for deliverance of the kind colonizer interned at stanley as all our brothers stagger mass rape’s estimation at 10,000 i don’t want to talk about it i was so unhappy then i’m happy now that i have you little shoe and pretty dress my hair’s a mess do you have to drive that ugly car star let’s get away from him he’s ignorant he doesn’t know anything. and do you have lots of pretty friends in your nice school in new found land, new fin lund i wanted to go to school he made me stop at grade three i could have been smart like you like your mama all my children are so smart i never thought my life would turn out this good buy me another set of those pajamas from zeller so comfy and so cheap a leap and pass me my chanel sweet smell of everything’s gonna be alright


It Takes a Mountain

To build a village at Yau Yat Chuen

An Embargo to lose it

3.
Dear Madness working the intellectual railroad the frog and pony show open for business open for booty playing footsie with the cooties mark of the schoolyard god’s her own father and she don’t even believe in ‘im roll the rock over the opening of my cave my cu chi tunnels the funnel of my widening drain, Dear Marksman in the jungles of Borneo faking Chinese to Japanese, dirty knees, dirty money of our Sinopec n Petronas moan-digging the dirt of our home on native land, Dear Tazara, Addis Adaba to Djibouti looting African earth digging the dearth of the widening girth our hunger sprung from an English taste for tea. Dear Hestia my best friend’s hearth lit on the heath of your cliff the strange boy howling opium to Cathay Pacific’s honorific, the kow tow’s go-down as Japanese jetfighters bomb the warehouses of Yeh Yeh’s labour in the fresh modern photoshop da tsap to steward through loyal labour and the desire to do the ancestors proud. Dear Hustler, shaking your kung fu spread wide and sweet as oriental openings slanted for business in spite of what your emperor daddy wanted, Dear Malwa sweet and deep as forever sleep I’ve been working on the exploitative labour front my corded back carrying catties for the rich man’s bone, my fingers nimble quick as candlesticks fiddling flowers etching iPhones, Dear Labour, Dear Back Pain, sing me a song of the Middle Temple the hemp the gentlemen of Verona, Dear Kona, Dear Soma, the body ticks its lickin pickin its quick while the jackpot’s a sweet 99 million. I wear my therapist’s avatar, my politic’s meat puppet a drop for the crabs in the pulpit while the octopus waves its metro card at the South China Morning Post conceding to PRC propaganda.


Blast Rocky Mountains for cash
Railway tunnel unites Whites only
Leaves cousins in ditch

4.
Hey five year old village girl disposable as razors after the stubble bursts your bubble, my hubble sees far as mars as jupiter hooping the old men of endless war to even the Cold War score, Hey Hot Dog, Hey Pol Pot, Hey Chairman Mao after the how of your Long March your love for the people swinging empty as bottles after the glass is broken after the beatings after the confessions the disappearances the slashed tongues and cracked skulls, Dear Complicity your felicity’s a kitty’s mirror cute as a cut smile on pink plastic and beautiful dreamer dream unto me, I scare my therapist’s gesture civil as personal boundaries flashing a forged passport at the hoarder’s border. Sing me a song of the Knights Templar the flight’s examplar, manufacturing samples for the moving market. Dear Rosy, Dear Tarot, the root of my personal potato, I cross my time’s centred present, Dear Judgement, Dear Hanged Man drawing us from the hard walls of our ancient caves, horses gallop for scallops racing the track Arabia to Happy Valley, bet on it your ducky’s lucky jockeying for transition even as our radios phone home. Dear deer, your innocent forest sprouts ghost moss and old growth, as linear time breaks its boiler. Door deer at the threshhold seeks mesh to reweb your mycorrhizae, mushroom of my creamy soup the loop hoops us scooping the blooper’s real reel.

Citizen Science
Neoliberal Capital
A woman limping

5.
Dear May Day, I’m falling, help I need more bodies more selves to sell out to the Man he’s multiple and wants my blood heart kidney liver my cunt my shunt my front to back and up the bum, Dear Moo Day, the cows can’t take it any more milked and meted out to the highest bidder in steaks and bakes rump roasts and tenderloin, my sweetest dearest as innocent brown-eyed girls, Dear Foreplay, I forgot my prophylactic I’m haptic wired on Starbucks touch me quick my Queequeg’s thirsty for the thump of the captain’s peg leg, my Achilles heel was my Achilles heel and the battle’s just begun, ten years at war or twenty Dear Mui Lan waving your jolly green Dear Disney, Dear Friendly Giant, I’m compliant hemmed in by the haul of your totalizing system, Dear Stem Cell, Dear Cow Bell dialing the old rotor to get that long distance feeling. Dear Brow, Dear Beating I’m sleeting up to here with the thick of it, the quick of it, the closed border of my marginal being the wasp buzz in the wall of the house, the skitter of the mouse and the fast trap we set with peanut butter to slap the flap splat that little brown furry furious as unwanted only here because of you and your waste and your warmth the house of your greedy cover. Dear Rat that ate the trapped mouse, Dear Brother Rat that ate the peanut butter in the other trap, it clapped your body too big to die you skittered for hours blood brain spatter over walls wires hammers boots camping gear hooks and tarps and Edward had to clean because I wouldn’t even look.