Don’t ask me to be careless
I cannot care less
cannot forget the muscle memory of migration
at the base of my neck
because I fear a future of
forever facing forward,
forehead forgetting that the passing
of time is told by the breaths
of mitochondria and the
birth of cells.
My tears will find the sea
if I remember that these
floorboards too once had
leaves.
I wrote this poem to accompany a tea-serving with the Multicultural Teahouse Collective, for Latitude 53’s Winter Salon at Pacific Cafe in Edmonton’s McCauley neighbourhood on January 31. The theme of the night was light
L-I-G-H-T(ea): A Recipe
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
Come in out of the dark
heat water,
shake in a few leaves
wait
take tea cup in hand
feel steam on face
wait
as leaf
water
heat
unfolds into…
a memory of a morning when
a bead of water rolls into the earth
traces its way down into the dark between earthworm burrows and beetle routes
to kiss awake a seed
inside rigid cell walls
mitochondria breath in
and out
begin
to synthesize possibilities
to send out shoots
that reach up out of the soil in search
of light.
Light
water
heat
translate into
shiny shoots and buds plucked by gentle hands
to the beat of bare feet over wet earth,
morning songs sung to high mountains
fly up over clouds in search of light.
Light
water
heat
berth winds that fill sails
of ships carrying cargo from the
fingertips of the east to the lips of the west
wrapping the world
like trade routes, like fire-flies, like tea-lights.
Come in out of the dark
let heat
water
leaf
unfold your hearts
and listen
as tea-cup poets speak of light.
*A note about this poem: I wanted to try writing something that was about tea and hope and light, and not revolutions or “social justice”. With the theme of light on my mind, two days later, I passed Roberston-Wesley United Church, and saw this quote on their board: “Give light and people will find a way”. Curious about the origins, I looked it up, and found out these are the words of Ella Baker, a leading African American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s, who was a behind-the-scenes activist, working alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, including: Rosa Parks, W.E.B. DuBois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr. She also worked closely with her friend, longtime white anti-racist activist Anne Braden. I guess sometimes themes have a way of making themselves universal…
**If you want to learn more about Anne Braden, check out “Noisy and Quiet” the blog of my friend, Annie Banks, who is writing about her experiences in the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Organizing Training Program in San Francisco.
I asked my mom to translate “Idle No More” into Chinese. She interpreted it as 不再旁觀 (bu zai pan guan, as pronounced in Mandarin, written in traditional characters) – literally “no more watch on the side”.
*This is adapted from a Chinese idiom that describes people folding their arms and watching what is happening, who do not help out.
A Revolutionary’s Guide to Breaking (It) Up
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
ONE
You’ve been busy this year,
holding your ground against riot cops in the streets of Montreal
holding out against the corporations that would take the land from beneath your feet.
You’ve been busy holding up the sky.
TWO
You only cry when you cut onions.
But somebody breaks your heart
you will cry, a lot
and though you know in your little revolutionary heart
that Kimberly-Clark is responsible for the deforestation of the world’s great rainforests
you will have a box of Kleenex on hand, at all times.
THREE
You know how to break the rules,
how to break down walls,
how to break the chains of oppression.
But when somebody breaks your heart
You won’t know which systemic injustice to break apart first,
and though you’ve read all the books on how to resist patriarchy, capitalism, racism, classism, and facism,
when a lover says “cease and desist”,
you will not know how to break these rules.
FOUR
You will demand fair trial and due process
because you believe in justice, equity, and collective decision making.
They will tell you: “sorry, these rules do not apply in love and war”,
But you do not believe this.
And because you are a revolutionary
You will ask too many questions
Like, “why is status quo so?”
FIVE
The people united will never be defeated! The people united will never be defeated!
But you have been defeated.
It still will hurt a little
You might miss a step in the march a little.
You might feel foolish for wanting too much
You might question the effectiveness of your tactics
And the clarity of your objectives
You might ask: how do I know that this is worth fighting for?
SIX
You are tough, you are a warrior,
But if you have put aside your armour,
you will learn that you are not invincible.
SEVEN
Write a poem
because there is power in sharing your struggles.
But hearts do not belong on sleeves, so write it in the second person, please.
EIGHT
Do not retaliate.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say this:
The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.
So you will bear no weapons, no anger, no shame.
You will pick yourself up after a fall
Dust off your knees, hold your head high
And carry nothing but pride
in knowing you loved enough that losing hurt.
NINE
Do not fear the loudness of your heart beat.
A broken heart is a beating heart is a feeling heart is a moving heart.
And you’ve gotta let life move you,
cause you’ll never move the masses if you’ve never let life move you.
TEN
The world is waiting, little revolutionary,
so keep moving.
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
This morning, a bead of water rolls into a sidewalk crack, and kisses a vagabond
cotyledon
out of quiescence.
Inside rigid cell walls
mitochondria breathe in/out through double membranes and the cotyledon
pushes
against the hollowness
inside its seed coat, shyly begins to
translate
stored food into
energy, begins to
synthesize possibilities
of roots finding
dignity
between molecules of soil and earthworm burrows and beetle routes
compacted under concrete sidewalks, possibilities
of leaves un-
furling declarations,
of pianissimo photosynthesis re-
claiming the streets,
of sunlight and water and carbon dioxide
transforming concealed longings
into substance.
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
I love cooking, but cooking with my grandmother is terrifying.
I’ve crossed the world to sit with her,
hoping that she’ll spill kitchen secrets of
black-beans, cornstarch, soy sauce
brought to a boil, and thickened.
But instead I learn to be thick-skinned
how to thicken my skin so that her words will not hurt me.
Her skin now is paper-thin, blue veins raised like remnants
of the Great Wall, and I wonder if the great wall of her
stubborness will ever fall.
She falls more often now, has broken both hips, hit
her head, the arches of feet that once squatted
in the streets
selling vegetables,
bok choy, gai lan, choy sum,
her feet no longer hold her.
But she is stubborn. And fear of falling is nothing
compared to the fear of failing to feed one’s family.
See, she still remembers hunger.
Now, she gets up to go into the kitchen, and I follow
hoping I’ll find kumquats preserved in salt after the new year
hoping I’ll find secret maps
tattooed onto the backs
of my hands that will let me criss-cross checkpoints and bypass borders
trading secrets for spices and spices for seeds…
But the kitchen is small, and I’m too tall.
I don’t know how to hold a knife, or how much
rice to cook for two. I don’t know the names of vegetables.
So she tells me to, “Get out of the way!”
And from the sidelines, I watch her
rinse rice
slice wintermelon
heat peanut oil in wok
criss-cross green onions and ginger
across fish belly.
My belly has never known hunger.
Yet, I am afraid that when the last Saskatchewan farmer yields
to Monsanto, we won’t know how to feed the cities.
I am afraid that when the grandparents are gone
our tongues will long for food that
we no longer know how to name
that the food we eat will feed us
but our taste buds will not flower.
But I can’t say:
Grandmother, I’m hungry.
I can’t say I’m hungry for recipes for survival
to help me hold out against the day-to-day doubts that come from
not knowing the words to name this hunger.
I can’t say I’m hungry for the wisdom of women who carried the weight
of the world on their hips.
I can’t say I’m searching because
if I have a daughter, I don’t know
what colour her skin will be
or what language she’ll dream in
but I need to be able to teach her to
trust her gut,
to find the food that makes her heart and stomach fly.
But I can’t say this in Cantonese.
Luckily, I love eating.
Now it’s 6 o’clock. The news is on, the neighbours are home,
the fish is steamed.
So, I fill our bowls, pour the tea,
the two of us take our seats.
Now, I say the only thing I can say,
“Paupau sik fan”
Eat rice grandmother
and we eat.
Performed with the Edmonton Slam Poetry Team: Colin Matty, Medgine Mathurin and Dirt Gritie. At the 2012 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, October 2012, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Dragons might have been here once
But we would never know
Cause the footprints that they might have left
Are covered by the snow.
Under every foot of track in the Fraser Valley lies the body of one Chinese railroad worker.
This is a poem for the train tracks built on the backs of mountains.
Train tracks built to build a nation.
Train tracks built to build a dream.
For the tracks that splintered spines of rocks.
For the tracks that splintered spines of Chinamen.
For the train tracks built on the backs of coolies.
This is a poem for the train tracks
Train tracks built on broken backs.
Broken bones.
Bones snapped like chopsticks.
This is a poem for the bones that never made it home.
This is a poem for the heads taxed
Yellow bodies less than white.
For the stories that line the faces of the grandparents who won’t speak to save face
Who faced the seas
Who faced the mountains
Who faced the wars
But whose faces will never appear on our $100 bills.
This is a poem for the ties that bind
Ties that break
That break our feet, our backs, our spines, our spirits
For we are like railroad ties,
Laid out in parallel lines
We don’t see that collectively
We are the track
That bears the load of each passing train
We are the track that underlies this economy
This society, where
the skeletons of our cities are shades darker than the faces in the board rooms.
These race lines, these power lines
Are the cracks in the foundations
Of this nation’s
heritage.
And in that Canadian heritage moment:
The Last Spike.
They’re all white.
This selective amnesia
Makes for collective amnesia
Makes us internalize
Invisible lies
Lines that we have learned by heart, by skin, by bone,
That tell us we are not at home here
That tell us we don’t have a stake in any of this
When these train tracks would not exist
Were it not for the backs of Chinamen.
So this is a poem for the silent spikes
Who never spoke because
Shame
Pride
Strength and
Hope that the future might be different kept them silent.
For all the backs upon which we stand, Canada
This is a poem for the train tracks.
Dragons might have been here once
I’ll tell you how we know
Cause the footprints that they
Left are where the wild flowers grow.
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
Fall back
into darkness.
This city becomes too big
and lonely again
distance builds ring-roads
around hearts.
Gold leaves haven’t yet fallen
off the white birch in my backyard.
Fall back
and trust
that tomorrow’s snowfall
will lighten the night.
By Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon
Come west, young man
and seek your fortunes.
Opportunity awaits.
Come west,
to a wild land of freedom, famed for its
vast plains, claim a piece for yourself.
Come west, to a land where
big trucks, big malls
big stuff, like giant
Ukrainiian easter eggs
and UFO landing pads
welcome you.
Come on out to a land named for a British Princess,
though these places already had names,
like Wetaskiwin: place of peace
Athabasca: place where there are reeds
Okotoks: crossing to the big rock.
Come west, young man, to a land
where petroleum
vampires suck the
spark from our
eyes, where crude awakenings
make dinosaurs roll in their graves
where the ghosts of resources extracted,
exploited, extirpated,
these ghosts linger.
Come west, young man,
believe an industry that invites you, entices you with money
like you would not believe.
Believe Suncor, Shell and Syncrude
who spin crude tales
out of the truths of tailings ponds
that leave toxic trails in our bodies, the water, the land.
Believe a government who spins crude tales to
make believe that cancer rates downstream are irrelevant.
Come west, young man,
to a city that I grew up in
but don’t recognize anymore, because
building cranes are straining for a sky that keeps getting higher
and higher,
because it’s ringed by refineries, like
teen beauty queen tiaras
that wink and glitter
spilling sprawl into the night.
This is the prize you seek.
Here young man, you will watch as
a mosquito siphons blood from the buttocks of the last
bison, as the last bison shits on the lost
shin of some un-discovered dinosaur, drowned in
bitumen.
Young man, you will roll down the window of your god-given
SUV,
aim the barrel of your gun,and
pull the trigger.
Then we will say,
no.
Overhead powerlines will become
the charged
sweetgrass sage peace pipe
lines of palms
lines of power.
Thunder will gallop in, chasing butterflies
over the prairie edge
between the backwards blink of
birch branches.
We will say, no
Dene, Cree, Métis treaty lands
leased to tar sands industry.
No train tracks laid
by Chinese.
No Black pioneers
forced off their farms.
No buffalo meat left to rot
by European settlers.
No,
we say.
The pressure of 4.5 billion years of
crushing, faulting,
stratification is
released. Captured and re-
leased, reserves re-cover this land
with bison,
boreal forest, parkland, grassland, foothills, muskeg.
Rivers unwind.
Rocky Mountains unfold.
Canadian Shield melts to magma, and
cast-off carapaces expand
until the sea floor crawls with crustaceans again.
So, young man,
if you chase the sun west
to east of the mountains
above dreaming dinosaurs and buffalo bones
where the wind in the leaves of aspen trees is the sea,
the skies will open up and you will breathe again.
Come west and
dance hip hop
hip to hip
among the wild rosehips
down by the river.
Come west and line dance down
yellow highway lines.
Maybe you will find your fortunes if you
drive out past the city lights.
Maybe you will
turn off the highway
to stands of pines
and arrive at a lake
where the sunset splits the sky
under banks of colouds
and you will lay with your cheek to the ground
and your eyes on the orange slice of
horizon
as stars freckle the dark, high above
as ducks scatter up off the water
as the north star rises, and the moon comes up
and all you will know is that you are here
on this soil
under this sky
and you are small
and this is too big, and
you cannot own this.
Performed at the Breath in Poetry Slam Finals, April 2012, Edmonton, Alberta.
Kathryn 君妍 Lennon 