Alan Yue

Incomplete Blues

There are frays in the way a child lets a parent go.
              Bb7
I drop a stone off the pier, wishing it would
bounce back into my palm. Or, to not be another body
held briefly by lakewater. I watch the reddish
water sear yellow and I think it’s a good day.
              Eb7
I let an old story fall into the sun’s reflection
like a koi in reverse, shriveling back
in, the closing of a citrus flower. This once-dragon
sears into lakewater, I let the days rise out.
              Bb7
drop a life into the hole in the land, we only remember
ends, or beds. I watch as you retreat
into a small, round mandarin wrapped by your blue cotton jacket. How
your red packets & seed-shaped eyes unwringe
                            into citrus flesh.
              F-7
How many dead dragons find rest in the lakes they flew out of? I forget
all the shells I’ve dropped into bodies of water, have they reached bone?
              Bb7
drop a sun into the water—drop a gold son into
the water: the lake evaporates in stray threads—holds life in the drowning called between.
              Eb7
Yeye, your son holds onto your old scales – thousands of orange peels, ripped in
tender oblong chunks – he wears them like a surrender. They dry and harden,
thinning and falling in trails. Like sunset dappled waves, he is rapidly stilling.
Yeye, I wonder some days if he is nothing
but these things you left behind.

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