A South Carolina State of Nation Mind, and: Eating Vegetarian in Taichung with Chien Cheng-chen
- A South Carolina State of Nation Mind, and: Eating Vegetarian in Taichung with Chien Cheng-chen
A South Carolina State of Nation Mind
after Jay Z
Mosquitoes drove whites upland to countmoney black overseers made, mosquitoesmade the air grow whelps on skin unused to whatmakes money, the sun boiling Charleston harbor,boats chugging through the marsh with rice,mosquitoes, not blacks and their congressesof prayer, disease like the riots in the land,the second Civil War when Brown decisionsset free Middle Passage ghosts, free so blackscould own corners, drive whites to the hills,suburbs choking with Nigerian petroleum,back to Africa again for investment capital,triangles of oil, dope, experimental drugs,mosquitoes drove whites upland to countvotes when the cities turned black and blackmayors won the empty space of abandonedplantations, mosquitoes, insects with some grandconnection to God, wings pulled apart by childrenwho voted the first black man to oversee a countrytearing its own guts apart to escape history. [End Page 56]
Eating Vegetarian in Taichung with Chien Cheng-chen
in memory of the earthquake of '99
It is a perfect treaty with slaughters,nothing eaten except what grows in earth,with flowers smiling on our tables, smoothstones to tickle our soles as we walk.
I am reminding myself of the waythe vines climb the hills in patterns,a set of crowns for wise heads, wishesfor dreams absent in Taiwan's sorrow.
If there is one thing I want this placeto know, to think of when it cannot see me,it might be a jewel in a joint in my fingerwhere cartilage once was, or the deft way
a bird claims a hollow space in the air,anything but the sounds of grief usheredout when the ground made the sky tremble,the earthquake stealing life from children. [End Page 57]
Afaa Michael Weaver is a poet, playwright, short fiction writer, and editor. At Simmons College he holds the Alumnae Chair in English and is Chairman of the Simmons International Chinese Poetry Conference. His 12th collection of poetry is The Government of Nature (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).
