DOWRY

For my wedding my mother gave me
two jade rings, a skirt of crimson silk,
two red woolen blankets trimmed
with green thread for luck
and fertility, six pairs of ivory
chopsticks and a large steel wok.

"To cook with all your days,
to protect when evil spirits
sniff your footprints.
Blacked by fire, this wok will turn
ghosts from your house.
Set it bottom side up in your door
should you feel haunted."

So I came to America carrying a wok.
My veins carried thin blue milk
from my mother's carefully hidden breasts.
She had nursed me herself, she said.
She also ascribed my height
to cow's milk imported from England.
I could not decide which history
to believe. Sometimes at five in the morning
I believed both.

by Hilary Tham

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