Eureka
—In 1885, Eureka Councilman, David Kendall, was shot and
killed in crossfire near Eureka’s Chinatown. Fifteen local
leaders ordered all Chinese American residents to leave
Eureka within 48 hours. In the first expulsion, ships
transported 263 Chinese American people to San Francisco.
I got up early the trees asked me to
trees relax their branches during night but
men always gather before dawn I took
a wrong turn ran into the men I drove
thirteen blocks beyond my own death I was
surprised I no longer needed my words
what if life is predicated on death
it borders our lives like a pack of wolves
there are hundreds of holes in Eureka
holes in the pavement holes in the men’s eyes
holes within light even holes in beauty
what if a poem doesn’t make a difference
what if there is no such thing as a poem
I got up early I asked the trees to
I stopped at Wendy’s to eat with the men
I wanted to see the trees while bloated
so that I wouldn’t use them for hunger
all the way down there were trees on both sides
but those trees weren’t the trees I was seeking
behind the trees there are always more trees
behind the men there are always more men
to be am is are was were being been
I will write them into all of my poems
to clarity clarity clarity
what is clarity but a broken muse
the name callers believe a poem should be X
like how the Chinese should always be Y
newspapers said the Chinese wielded guns
the Chinese not people Chinese people
the book the car the Chinese the tractor
down the 101 I thought about them
them and their voices and their eyes and skin
their darkness from Guangdong mine from Fujian
I have no ancestors from Eureka
who has the rights to imagination
who has the rights to illumination
what if history must travel through us
remembered or just appropriated
I am Chinese yet I am not Chinese
I am this kind of Chinese not that one
I passed trucks with eight dead trees on their sides
Chinese women are often unseated
Chinese people are often on our sides
it’s easier to be driven away
this time they were driven away on boats
a tree temporarily becomes hope
most of the time a tree is just a tree
Oppen said about the deer they are there
replace the deer with the Chinese people
when I approached the entrance someone spoke
I was alone it was my estrangement
a couple at the first stop staring at
the map I was once a couple here too
I stopped to see my younger coupled self
and the man I once loved more than the trees
just like me the woman followed the man
just like me she read the signs quietly
just like me she listened to the critics
it’s easy to disappear in their minds
it’s easy to empty out in the trees
I felt lightheaded as I passed my past
the Chinese men never made it this far
to cast out to throw to toss expulsion
they said a bullet hit a councilman
con-calare concilium cuncile man
stray (they say) bullet killed David Kendall
a bullet is meant to enter something
a bullet is meant to exit something
a bullet can be stopped by what it kills
no one ever cares about the entrance
is there such a thing as a stray bullet
every bullet is stray once it exits
I came early to avoid the crowds
only one green car in the parking lot
and thousands of trees stunned by their own height
I left my words in the glove compartment
even though my eyesight was worsening
even though I needed the words to see
even though the man never married me
even though the trees didn’t remember
even though the trees recorded details
even though I never gave my consent
even though the expulsions were nearby
their rings are syllables show the burnings
it couldn’t have happened without these trees
everything is relative to the earth
everything is relative to these trees
Chinese people pinned against these trees so
I am always dragging children to trees
the snow and my feminism mixed in
snowflakes and my ambition mixed in no
one wanted to see the trees but me no
one needed them but me some of us want
only to see the trees what the trees mean
other kinds of people prefer the sea
since the sea doesn’t have any insides
what if my children don’t recall the trees
what if they believe I am their mother
they must know I was never a good one
that I flung them onto this earth and burned
that their bodies didn’t come out of me
but that their bodies were burned off of me
what if one was in a wagon crying
what if the other one was on my back
there is no way to transfer memory
why say memory is passed down as if
the future is something underneath us
our memories are all accidental
our memories are all incidental
our mammograms look like lightning struck them
David Kendall died another boy shot
David Kendall died February sixth
at grave 22 Section F Row 4
1885 55-years-old
he had a beard that was fluent in trees
Prudence Marian Kendall next to him
she killed herself 17 months later
maybe memory isn’t in portrait
maybe all memory is in landscape
to do things the way a tree would do things
monotonous dropping of green garments
remembrance day for not remembering
stories have a beginning and ending
endings never care about beginnings
but a beginning cares about endings
I have just described the problem of birth
I have just described the problem of war
where is the boy and his foot besides dead
where are the two Chinese men with no names
truth is but an accident paraphrased
history can’t be dilated what if
history is meant to be forgotten
everything will turn into Sappho’s poems
because we only live so many years
my two faces next to the Founders Tree
the Chinese one and the one out of sight
the tallest until the 1950s
height 346 or 364
every measurement is erroneous
every history is spontaneous
even with knowledge of past histories
my face today more Chinese than the past
I kept on stopping to write down new thoughts
but I left my language in the car so
I put together new words with silence
Niedecker said light and silence make sound
every memory is mostly silence
I went the wrong way around the loop and
my memories were all just rehearsals
what if our memories are immortal
a thing that can exist without its root
fallen trees everywhere as if I had
walked into the middle of memory
at one point fallen trees on every side
how is powerlessness also beauty
one Chinese man arrested behind bars
600 people gathered in the street
white people but no one ever said so
they found wood nailed it into a gallows
nails that must have sounded like expansion
every death is paratactic next to
but no one knows what it means so that
some deaths are worth less than others at what
point is a nail guilty in its stuckness
at what point does a crowd become a mob
at what point does a death no longer end
when the death can’t find its own memories
dead trunks rise with their roots splayed like language
by the highway flattened sheets of plywood
so many ways to wander off and die
what starts as beauty always becomes death
what starts as death always becomes beauty
I counted fifteen tree trunks on their sides
they were too far away from each other
so they threw their dead leaves to each other
when a leaf touched me it felt like a stone
I had somehow blocked a tree’s love letter
love letters are never in a straight line
or maybe love doesn’t really exist
because love is just moving perception
because love is a leaf thrown too softly
a Committee of men voted and won
numbers are the language of expulsions
the Chinese people had two days to leave
2,880 minutes
86,400 seconds
imagine the decadent signatures
imagine putting a life in a bag
a bag that had a hole toward moonlight
the comb the hairpin the ghost the grammar
the hole was just a hole like every hole
the idea that we could move and belong
every belonging is made of a hole
263 Chinese people
holed in a warehouse at the wharf cold foul
480 Chinese people on
two steamships to San Francisco I talked
to the stiffness of the dead trees by not
talking soon we will be absorbed into
the ground but it will feel like a soft palm
I heard even peaches had a bad year
I went inside the hollow of a tree
burnt through by fire but still with its selfhood
I could understand this burning from birth
I touched the insides of my own casket
our caskets our last and final form to
imagine a casket made of Redwood
to imagine scents as if in this trunk
imagine lying in a leaky boat
wondering if Charon were rowing it
my mother had paid for a pine casket
but then she decided to burn herself
or to have herself burned there’s no difference
the next year 56 Chinese people
filed a lawsuit against Eureka the
lawsuit was dismissed three years later of
course Chinese people couldn’t own land this
land is your land this land is your land this
letter said don’t open the new trees that
maybe land was never meant to be owned
even poppies must fear our bargaining
no one wants to own stillness or a cloud
no one wants to bid for hoarfrost or tide
I stood too long inside the burnt Redwood
the heat was my third hot flash of the day
this one had the dimensions of a tree
I stayed inside the tree and wrote a poem
since I didn’t have words I used my heat
by the time I left the trunk it was dark
in the trees I hadn’t become smaller
in fact my thinking had unwound and grown
in the forest small and large were the same
I used to be a descendent of birds
the sky and I were incompatible
history and truth incompatible
my womb and pleasure incompatible
desire doesn’t happen in the forest
a place where you do nothing and feel whole
I have wrongly looked for things that could move
I expected hope to plow into me
as I wandered in the forest time cared
so it stopped to have a conversation
time is relentless when it doesn’t care
I insisted that beauty was beauty
but time insisted that time was beauty
and I began to understand my thoughts
because I had insisted on beauty
because I had insisted on the fringe
because I had insisted on cutouts
because children were insisted on me
because my womb had insisted on me
my mind was always globed I refused it
so it floated above time ahead of
time but my mind needed to stay inside
time for some of us time is our country
for some of us sadness is a country
a mother has to share her arteries
cruel that art is a part of arteries
one child will take your whole day two your words
I don’t want to share my sadness with them
critics will hate your motherhood poems they
will hate your menopause poems they will hate
your melancholy because it cannot
be smeared as it is also racial as
if melancholy can also be wrapped
as if selling joy can save the glaciers
your own people will also hate your poems
because everyone is drowning at once
what you write is a parenthesis in
their sentence too which is folded and sold
by the time I looked up again I heard
a bird arranging itself in my mind
I wondered if this bird knew what I knew
that it lived amongst the world’s largest trees
that its song was pushed around by silence
my song was pushed around by readers and
I had gotten so used to dominance
to white opportunity on my hands
my ambition lay on the forest floor
Romantics pushed these trees on canvas but
I had no impulse to push none to touch
is it possible to touch with your eyes
to fix something by not using your hands
to be a poet without ambition
to be a poet without sacrifice
to be a poet without explaining
without white daisies without a homeland
without transaction without being seen
to make something without words but just sight
to assemble thinking without whiteness
to study the soul without a body
to have thoughts but not agree to trade them
my guides said the Chinese people scattered
when the boat landed in San Francisco
like roaches in the bathroom in Taiwan
I turned on the light when I was lonely
they scattered dressed up in their red tunics
nothing sentimental red torn bodies
in Eureka men in the street scattered
white people called Chinese people foul on
my tour I held the word in my arms I
rocked it as I had rocked my children sung
a lullaby for my dirty humming
they said the streets were filled with manure
that Chinatown was in the worst foul part
where the streets would collect water when it
rained mud made its way down their throats as we
walked on our tour I wondered what others
thought five Asians pointed at Fourth and E
dark figures that looked like soil to be tilled
can a point of view be fungal or foul
is history the same thing as story
if story is made of language then what
if language is made of hollow then what
if language is made of money then what
if language is made of whiteness then what
when humans die language will outlive us
if we live forever we outlive hope
hope and language a herd of dead houses
I didn’t smell sewage but Redwoods when
I looked at photos in the library the
man in the corner of the photo two
baskets on a stick on his shoulders what
if punctum and studium cross and meet
I was face to face with my own face
I was face to face with my own blue
under a lamp a sign that said Tung Sing
later it said Eureka Fish Market
switched to six white men a boy three chickens
or three fowls six wings four consolations
20 violences 13 types of fish
16 supporters of Chinese people
everyone is good at saving themselves
everyone is good at stealing stories
no one is able to carry dressers
filthy things left behind such as mouths tongues
foul foul filth fouled fouling afoul defile
here I am in the forest smelling foul
we are all coefficients of the moon
does the moon have a smell does it smell foul
we are all coefficients of hatred
a truant looking for the Mahan Plaque
I looked hard for Laura and James Mahan
who bought this Redwood grove but I was lost
so lost in the logging of my own thoughts
that when they came back to me cut I sobbed
my thoughts were never foul never smelled bad
though I never cared about myths or put
Orpheus in a poem I had a faith
they expect me to write about some war
in another country without an end
notice the word write is so close to white
appropriate procreation create
but I only want to write about trees
about the dead Chinese people near trees
about my dead family near the trees
about my dead history near the trees
I missed the plaque because I was stone light
I had become afraid of the green clasps
I had no man to protect me just trees
I knew the trees weren’t the real enemy
for some of us walking alone is joy
for some of us walking alone is death
for some of us history is Sunday
and Monday because it is our faces
for some of us writing is suicide
but not writing is also suicide
a philosopher asks what if you knew…
the world would end shortly after your death
if you knew that now would you wash the pear
what would you write or would you write at all
what would you do with your wrong splinted face
what if I held a stick and two baskets
what if I am always holding a stick
what if my two baskets are filled with gaze
someone wrote Chinese left on the photo
as in they decided to move away
not that they were left of everyone else
I counted 20 on another barge
1906 the second expulsion
Jesse A. Meiser the photographer
I found a photo of him online he
had kind eyes a large moustache and a hat
how to keep my sadness from catching fire
because my love is always redundant
I wanted to give it to Jesse too
I had enough sadness to go around
it’s never clear which cloud to blame for grief
all the clouds rearranging their syntax
what if clouds in the photo are these same
clouds the same man with a long braid or queue
who decided queue means hair or a line
that free means not imprisoned or…of charge
that means each word is a form of pity
and every word gets to feel bittersweet
my eyes have been wet my entire life
I got up early the tears asked me to
by the end of the trail I was 50
my sentences back in captivity
my depression hiding in its curtain
I had no idea it would grow so large
I had no idea my mother could die
I had no idea my father would die
no idea that writing was recording
not what we witness but what we can’t see
I had no idea history would die
I had no idea I would want to die
but I knew I wouldn’t marry the man
I knew I loved concentric sentences
I knew feeling was something to save
in these trees in things that can’t be lifted
people always gossip about killing
but they never gossip about beauty
never about the beauty that witnessed
when the killing happens under large trees
when the killing happens in a straight line
finally I heard three people talking
the irregularity of humans
these people I would never see again
we are both the first time and the last time
most poems are about the first or last times
I want to write about the middle times
where we aren’t bent over breathing in death
but bent over breathing out chains of light
I heard them talking about the burnt tree
the same tree I had written a poem in
they were really talking about my poem
a poem is the inside of a burnt tree
only heard about in the upper leaves
a rumor that only some know is true
a poem is really a rumor of death
our future has always been a rumor
only some of us hear it approaching
I had left the earth for several hours
I thought I was practicing for my death
but I was really practicing to live
I had no idea I would want to live
Eureka also means to find something
to find something means to end something else
perhaps these are exactly the same thing
when I left I took the trail on the right
which was the same as the trail on the left
when I left I used a different restroom
but it was the same as the other ones
I left my tears in the forest and drove
back the way I came back to Eureka
all of it was true some of it was true
all of it mattered some of it metered
is everything dimming or lighting up
I got up early the trees warned me to
I wanted to write this to warn someone
write this to tell someone that my father’s
name was Fu Sheung Chang not the Chinese that
it’s possible we are forgetful that
history can be held out in front of
us like dropping a toddler down a slide
that it’s possible we’re made of throat light
our whole lives are a convalescence
does language have morality does hope
if the earth will end does the face matter
it’s possible language is a country
it’s possible violence stems from language
possible that violence is a signal
it’s possible that these trees are headstones
it’s possible we can outlive violence
