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Overview
In her second collection of poems, Lee Ann Roripaugh probes themes of mixed-race female identities, evoking the molting processes of snakes and insects who shed their skins and shells as an ongoing metaphor for transformation of self. Intertwining contemporary renditions of traditional Japanese myths and fairy tales with poems that explore the landscape of childhood and early adolescence, she blurs the boundaries between myth and memory, between real and imagined selves. This collection explores cultural, psychological, and physical liminalities and exposes the diasporic arc cast by first-generation Asian American mothers and their second-generation daughters, revealing a desire for metamorphosis of self through time, geography, culture, and myth.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780809388844 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Southern Illinois University Press |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2004 |
| Series: | Crab Orchard Series in Poetry |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Sales rank: | 747,254 |
| File size: | 980 KB |
About the Author
Lee Ann Roripaugh’s first collection of poems, Beyond Heart Mountain, was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series Award. She is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship from the Archibald Bush Foundation, the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, and in the anthology Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of South Dakota and the poet laureate of South Dakota.
Read an Excerpt
Year of the Snake
By LEE ANN RORIPAUGH
Southern Illinois University Press
Copyright © 2004 Lee Ann RoripaughAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8093-2569-6
Chapter One
Snake SongI was born in the year of the snake and maybe this is why I speak with a forked tongue. I've followed
the vague sibilant thread of the voice in my head curling into a tangled snarl
of roots, grass, stems and leaves, so that when I open my mouth to talk, a strange song, not mine, comes tumbling out.
Ai-noko, half-caste, I tilt my head in the mirror first this way then that-Horikoshi
cheekbones, Caucasian nose, my ojii-san's serious eyebrows feathering like ink strokes over eyes
not quite green, not quite brown, in the tranquil white moon of my face. My blood runs hot and cold.
Slit me open, let me pare away my body's tourniquet rind. Itch, twist and tug, I know the lust
for heavy glistening coil wrapping itself around reborn coil. I know the dangers
of the in-between. And so I keep my skins as transient as the inner tissue-paper wings
that ladybugs conceal beneath the spotted shields of their bright metallic shells. And then
I shed them, one after another, like the discarded husks of mayflies clinging in tenaciouspearlescent-translucent
my ghost selves are carried up like tiny dragon kites spiraling higher, higher ... higher.
Innocence My parents wrapped an old sheet around the playpen to shield me from the television, but I learned to pull up the edge and peer out from underneath to see newsreels from Vietnam. I remember stretchers, helicopters, and trees flickering sadness, ominous black and white. But the night of the moon landing I was given my dinner early then plucked from slumber, flushed and cranky, wrapped in a crocheted afghan and propped up on the sofa in front of Walter Cronkite. I was four, and secretly I wondered if I would see the moon rabbit, who was pulled from flame and taken to live in the sky by the old man in the moon. But instead there was crackling static, the disembodied voices of the astronauts, chubby in their white spacesuits as they finally climbed down the ladder to bob on the rocky surface of the moon as if it were elastic as a trampoline. So quiet and dark, it seemed lonelier than Wyoming when snow spilled over the fence tops and made strange bent shapes of the Russian olive and pine trees, hulking silent humps of the cars, and antelope stepped into the frozen circle of the city limits. I became a child of the moon landing- raised on Tang and Pillsbury space food sticks, chewy in the silver- lined, tubular wrappers-my face tilted up like a stargazer lily, with its red-tipped matchstick stamens yearning, antennae-like, for the Sea of Tranquility, the void beyond. At night I watched the man who lived in the house across the back alley from my bedroom walk around without his clothes through my pirate's telescope. And when I was tired of watching him I watched the moon instead, hanging pale orange, like a melon-balled scoop of cantaloupe in the sky. Empty, shimmering rock-cold fruit, but I wanted to swallow it whole.
Love Potion My mother's plants are like favored siblings. She cuts back their stalks, nips
their buds with quick, ruthless snips. They grow, bloom, and don't talk back. I become good at sabotage-
tearing the heads off snapdragons, pinching open their jaws between
thumb and forefinger to stare down their gaping throats- pistil and stamen ivory wisps
of uvula, flickering tongue. I stuff each one of their mouths with
the juicy, choking weight of a Nanking cherry, and line their heads in colored rows
along the back alley fence as a warning. I steal an old
margarine tub, the kind with orange crowns, fill it with pink drops of my mother's hand lotion, a shot of Chanel No. 5, then stir in crushed mint leaves,
the tender petals of sweet peas, four spider legs pulled from the Daddy Longlegs caught
lurking around the back door, the yellow, pinhead centers of my
mother's African violets, which roll about like plucked-out insect eyes. A squirt
of sour rhubarb juice, a creamy dab of Pond's cold cream, and a spritz
of mosquito repellent for good measure. Next I gather Siberian snow
peas from the caragana bushes that border the side fence, slit
open the slim pods at the seams with a red-stained thumbnail to spill out a palm
full of peas, pale green, like tiny lima beans, to string together
with dental floss and a needle. I wait three days for the peas to turn hard and round
and brown, with tortoise shell whorls like tiger's-eye beads, and then I drape
the necklace as an offering around the bony clavicles, the fierce pear-shaped breasts
of the South Seas wooden carving my mother hides behind large pots
of Christmas cactus, whose earlobes I like to rub for luck. I let the love potion ripen,
grow swollen, rank and full of power, and then I dab it, like ointment,
inside the sleeve of my mother's pillowcase, on the cuffs of her denim jacket,
along the brim of her gardening hat, a dotted trail on the face
of her hand mirror. I think that her heart is made of glass, that my fingerprints will
sour, and flake off like dried milk. But instead, I find her in the garden,
cross-pollinating her flowers by hand, in case the bees hadn't done it right.
Her fingertips sticky and yellow, she touches my cheek and asks,
Who was the first person who ever thought to eat an artichoke?
Inside, I check to see in her bedroom mirror, and her golden
buttery thumbprint marks my face, that blooms alien, like some pale and questioning flower.
Loneliness My father made me keep the bright orange Sanka cans, with holes in the lids for ventilation, on the back porch overnight. But by morning, sunlight had steeped my frogs like tea bags, their bodies hot to touch as I laid them out under the Nanking cherry trees and tried to revive them with cold water from the garden hose. When my father took them away to bury, my mother asked me not to cry. That night was the Fourth of July, and my mother and father and I went up to the attic to watch the fireworks, each with a plate-sized circle of watermelon. I remember the rusty smell of metal and dirt from the attic screen windows, which were rarely opened; how they were littered with the clear, silver skins of mayflies, who had shed the boundaries of their old bodies so easily. I remember how silent it was in between the sporadic, bass-drum putter and teakettle whistling of the fireworks, and how, like some exotic, spangled night-blooming radiance, desolation flowered again and again over the roofs of our neighbors' houses.
DDT
My parents learned to hear the hollow crumple of gravel in the alley, the lumbering hum of
the truck's engine even in their sleep, and could leap from their bed at predawn- snapping on all the lights,
storm windows shimmying down screens to hit bottom with a metallic click, the outer windows slammed
shut, topped by a squeaky twist of the lock for good measure. Both former war children, this was all executed
with the precision of an air-raid drill-I could hear my mother's bare feet pat the floor as she moved
from window to window, calling out, DDT! DDT! Don't you breathe! It frightened me to wake
this way, and I would hold my breath, squeezing my face deep into the pillow, sure that a single whiff
would either kill me dead or instantly transform me into a child of thalidomide. The well-planned world my parents mapped had grown venomous and strange with Charlie Manson, Kent State, Agent Orange,
LSD. The truck came by again at dusk, and the neighborhood children ran behind it-the sweet
spray of the pesticide cooling the heat and dust from their bodies, settling on the backs of their tongues like finely misted sugar
water. And once again, my parents would repeat their ritual of sealing shut their house. This is one of the gestures by which I remember my parents-
locking their windows to keep me from a world much too poisonous for their approval, my mother urging me not to breathe.
I turned out stubborn, head- strong, and couldn't wait to claw through the window screens, inhale and be transformed-
like the moths with extra antennae, or frogs with the multiple limbs of a Hindu goddess, blind
fish with a third, wide eye.
Dream Carp
People traveled from miles away to see my paintings of fish- the jeweled armor of their scales, the beadlike
set of their eyes in rubbery socket rings, the glimmering swish of fin and tail
so real it seemed that you could almost dip a net deep into the paper and pull up the arching wet
weight of a golden carp, a shiny trout, or the dark muscular heft of a bass with
its mouth stretched into the surprised, wiry "oh" of a child's wind sock. I captured my models from the sea,
lake, and goldfish pond in the back garden, so careful not to let their mouths be torn
by the hook, their scales chipped, or the silky tissue of their tails ripped by a clumsy hand. I kept them in
large glass bowls, fed them mosquito wings or dry silkworm pupas offered from chopsticks,
and when I was finished making sketches, I quickly took them back and set them free again. Every
night I dream I swim with these fish as a golden carp-black spots on cloisonné scales,
pulled to the surface by the deceptive creamy luster of the moon or the sizzle of firefly lights
across the water. And every night I am tempted once again by the smell
of the baited hook, by my predictable hunger for earthly things, and each time I am surprised again
by the stinging hook in my lip that pulls me mercilessly into the bright air,
setting my gills on fire, the sharp, silver pain of the knife that slits me open so easily from tail
to throat to reveal the scarlet elastic of my raw gills, the translucent film
of my air sac, the milky rise of my stomach, and the gray marbled coil of my intestines. I rise late each day, and work in brighter light. When I die, I will have my paintings brought
down to the lake and slipped into the water. First the edges of ink will blur, and then there will be a great
flurry as the fins, tails, and bodies begin blossoming in- to life again, each
fish detaching from its canvas of silk or rice paper-a swirl of color, motion, swimming away.
Transience
Such a beautiful word, ephemeroptera, for those locust-like convergences at dusk and at dawn, during the early days of summer. Storm windows were opened so the house could breathe in lilac, which bloomed in voluptuous fruity clusters-the sweetness of the scent pierced by a hint of fresh mint rimming flower beds on either side of the back door. One by one, mayflies would arrive to grip the metal mesh of window screens in the wiry, tensile crook of their feet until, from the outside, the windows appeared to be festooned with pair after pair of tiny glistening wings. From inside my bedroom, the sway-backed curve of their bodies, slender flourish of their tail filaments cast shadows on the insides of my curtains, and the concentrated gaze of so many bulging dots of eyes made me feel as if I were being spied upon. I was miserable and shy, horribly in love with a boy who smoked grass and wore a fading purple jacket. All summer long a sinewy girl named Faith, with Breck-girl hair and a crocheted poncho, met him behind the band shelter in the park, where they threw down a blanket and made out under the lilacs, blue- jeaned legs tangled, as if trying to push through the isolation of their own bodies. Every time I saw them, I felt as if I were coming undone, the way a thumbnail splits open a pea pod, tough green fiber along the side unzipping the two halves, the peas inside neatly spilling out. I stopped riding my bike and stayed inside, spending hour after hour watching mayflies molt on the window screens, the struggle to pull themselves free from shells of their old skins. I imagined how it must have felt to push up against the margins of the body, that unforgiving delineation of self, and feel skin stretching, cracking- to press the shoulders past itch and hurt, that triumphant final twist of tail slithering free, and emerge sleeker, shinier, brighter, without a mouth to eat with, exquisite and doomed, driven to swarm in a mating dance over water. And what about the boy? It was so many selves ago, and all I remember of him now is the lilac color of that jacket he used to wear.
Happy Hour
I always forget the name, delphinium, even though it was the flower
the hummingbirds loved best. They came in pairs-sleek, emerald-bright
heads, the clockwork machinery of their blurred wings thrumming swift, menacing engines.
They slipped their beaks, as if they were swizzle sticks, deep into the blue
throats of delphinium and sucked dry the nectar- chilled hearts like goblets full of sweet,
frozen daiquiri. I liked to sit on the back porch in the evenings,
watching them and eating Spanish peanuts, rolling each nut between thumb and forefinger
to rub away the red salty skin like brittle tissue paper,
until the meat emerged gleaming, yellow like old ivory, smooth as polished bone.
And late August, after exclamations of gold flowers, tiny
and bitter, the caragana trees let down their beans to ripen, dry, and rupture-
at first there was the soft drum of popcorn, slick with oil, puttering some-
where in between seed, heat, and cloud. Then sharp cracks like cap guns or diminutive fireworks,
caragana peas catapulting skyward like pellet missiles.
Sometimes a meadowlark would lace the night air with its elaborate melody,
rippling and sleek as a black satin ribbon. Some- times there would be
a falling star. And because this happened in Wyoming, and because this was
my parents' house, and because I'm never happy with anything,
at any time, I always wished that I was somewhere, anywhere else, but here.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Year of the Snake by LEE ANN RORIPAUGH Copyright © 2004 by Lee Ann Roripaugh. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents Acknowledgments 00 Snake Song 00 Innocence 00 Love Potion 00 Loneliness 00 DDT 00 Dream Carp 00 Transience 00 Happy Hour 00 Snake Bridegroom 00 Octopus in the Freezer 00 Antelope Jerky 00 TransplantingMuse.¯ 00 Nanking Cherry Jam 00 Instinct 00 Girl with a Bowl on Her Head 00 Ennui 00 Tongue-Cut Sparrow 00 Nostalgia 00 Snake Wife 00 Albino Squirrel 00 Toothpick Warriors 00 Hope 00 White Butterfly 00Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: