Li Min Hua

 

Bounds

 

I

 

Mama switched me often,

always saying how much easier I had it,

as an only child.

Her mama switched all brothers and sisters

for any one's offense,

marched all seven round the family table

saying, "You other six will get round to evil

before the day is over."

But I had no company,

and had to choose my own switch.

I learned to pick small but thick,

usually branches of Birds of Paradise

because it scared her, and she just tapped.

Limber, sappy switches from ferns or mimosa,

she swung loudly, trusting them

to sting me only green.

If I brought a switch too small,

she sent me for another.

II

 

Papa paddled, but only four times.

The first time, I stole a shilling

from the fat girl in Year One

and bragged about it at supper.

Before the punishment,

I had to return the money

and say I was sorry,

while my parents listened in the stairwell.

The second time, at 9,

I taught Poon Pik Yuk

a game I had invented, Naked,

but her mama returned by the back garden.

We tried to drape ourselves

in Pik Yuk's brothers' paper dragon,

but were too late.

"Bounds," second of two pages.

The third time, Wong Yuet's papa

caught him and me begging pennies

from the foreigners outside the cinema.

I raised chickens to sell in the market.

I vaguely expected Papa to praise me again,

This time, since I didn't know the people,

I could not return the money.

I don't remember what I did with it,

but I'm sure I did not spend it on a film.

My fourth offense was so egregious

I seem to have blocked it out completely,

though in dreams I come nearer with age.

III

 

see Papa's hand ascend again,

each of the four paddlings,

the nail in the wooden slat

carefully turned away.

Mama often said the switchings

hurt her more than they did me,

but I did not believe her.

Yet in the basement

next to the coal bin,

my pants down, my fanny

bared for his surest aim,

each time my Papa wept.

IV

 

At fifty-one,

with both parents long dead,

with good and evil

now matured into a muddle,

what wouldn't I give

to go to the dark cellar,

find the smoothest broken slat with nail,

and drop my drawers.

I don't romanticize.

I remember the pain as pain.

I could not sit for hours.

But I always slept.

Li Min Hua is a professor at rutgers: The State University of New Jersey. He has authored three poetry collections: Sunspots (Lotus Press, 1976), Midnight Lessons (Samisdat, 1987), and Lutibelle's Pew (Dragon Disks, 1990). Li's poems have appeared in Black Bear Review, Poetry East, and Writer's Advantage.

 

 

 

Beauty for Ashes Poetry Review ©1996-2000

©A Creative Ash Publication 2000

Isaiah 61:1-3

 

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