[New-Poetry] Marilyn Chin

[Anny Ballardini]

I know this poem.

On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Judy Prince <jbalizsprince at googlemail.com>wrote:

> A dear friend just sent me this excellent [Excellent] poem, Turtle Soup, by
> Marilyn Chin.
> Best,
>
> Judy who enjoys Chin's humour as well as her other Excellent poetic bits
>
> ------------------------------
>
> *Turtle Soup*
>
> You go home one evening tired from work,
> and your mother boils you turtle soup.
> Twelve hours hunched over the hearth
> (who knows what else is in that cauldron).
>
> You say, "Ma, you've poached the symbol of long life;
> that turtle lived four thousand years, swam
> the Wet, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.
> Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
> grazed on splendid sericulture."
> (So, she boils the life out of him.)
>
> "All our ancestors have been fools.
> Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
> to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
> with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
> its liver will make you strong."
>
> "Sometimes you're the life, sometimes the sacrifice."
> Her sobbing is inconsolable.
> So, you spread that gentle napkin
> over your lap in decorous Pasadena.
>
> Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
> The golden decal on the green underbelly
> says "Made in Hong Kong."
>
> Is there nothing left but the shell
> and humanity's strange inscriptions,
> the songs, the rites, the oracles?
>
> FOR BEN HUANG
>
> Copyright (c) 1993 by Marilyn Chin, from *The Pheonix Gone, The Terrace
> Empty
> *Online Source: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/users/m/mdherrin/turtle.html
>
>
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>
>


-- 
Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
star!
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