The Flower Shop

In the coliseum of years,

I see him straddling some ruin,

my Po Po’s brother with the cicada husk eyes.

The light through those shells was grey,

as the light through those shells was grey,

too, that dusky December day

in Nanking.

A one-star general before he was starred

with bullets, Po Po’s brother would have a few

good years left when the shells screamed

through the city, in unison with

men and cicadas, the husky choir

of war; he was Po Po’s one

male sibling,

the star of their name in jeopardy.

That time he was saved—lifted from the fire

by a girl who desired him through the panes

of a flower shop window, he the only

man amid petals of ash and dust

neither fatal nor wet rust red, yet,

the one thing.

But now—in the coliseum of years when

the light shies away, with his shoddy

shell eyes, he can’t tell

chrysanthemums in a glass

from a glass jar full of tar, or

the bullet points of his life from those of

his killing.

He saved only what

he was gifted: that

he met his wife among flowers,

in 1937, in Nanking.

(Still he

hears her

beckoning.)