from my father’s unmown field.

I missed them with my rocks and sling,

but brought them to their knees

with a shout of my father’s name.

This was before rivers had names

other than names for my father.

It was even before there were numbers,

those fearsome first angels.

Well before the wind learned to speak

in the past tense,

long before it started crossing

into the future

by leaving behind all of its faces but one.

Watching my quarry tumble down the sky,

I began to long

to be born, to become

one of the heirs to the sorrows

of hunger, the rites of slaughter,

and the several names of desire and death.

The nearer I came to the place

where my game lay stunned, the more I yearned

for a new reckoning of fire and clay,

a new ratio of body and song,

just proportions of world and cry.

By the time I knelt over my spoil,

all of the light had withdrawn

to above the trees

and become an immense, bright ghost in the sky.

In the rearing shadow of the earth,

I stood up, my voice fugitive, my name vagabond,

a cursed and grieving brother

of every winged thing.

Inheritor of the sign of the violent

and the victim,

I awaited my true bride.

https://poems.com/poem/stolen-good/

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward   

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43012/from-blossoms

a man tells his son, trying to explain

the wisdom of learning a second tongue.

It’s an old story from the previous century

about my father and me.

The same old story from yesterday morning

about me and my son.

It’s called “Survival Strategies

and the Melancholy of Racial Assimilation.”

It’s called “Psychological Paradigms of Displaced Persons,”

called “The Child Who’d Rather Play than Study.”

the language inside you, says the man.

But what does he know about inside and outside,

my father who was spared nothing

in spite of the languages he used?

And me, confused about the flesh and the soul,

who asked once into a telephone,

You’re always inside me, a woman answered,

at peace with the body’s finitude,

at peace with the soul’s disregard

of space and time.

Am I inside you? I asked once

lying between her legs, confused

about the body and the heart.

she answered, at peace with the body’s greed,

at peace with the heart’s bewilderment.

It’s an ancient story from yesterday evening

called “Patterns of Love in Peoples of Diaspora,”

called “Loss of the Homeplace

and the Defilement of the Beloved,”

called “I want to Sing but I Don’t Know Any Songs.”

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52210/immigrant-blues

As the speaker sits down to eat lunch with his family, the way his father holds meat is referenced as his mother holds the meat of the trout “between her fingers deftly, the way [his] father did weeks ago.”(7-9). What may have at first been a random thought about the way his father hold meat becomes a reflection on how important these meals are to family. The speaker’s father has clearly passed away as it is strange for a member of the family to be absent from a meal for weeks, which is shown in the speaker’s comment that his father held his meat a particular way “weeks ago.”(9) In addition, his father “lay down to sleep”(9-10) which indicates his father being buried in the “snow-covered road”(10). In the poem, the speaker goes back to say that the “snow-covered road” his father rests in is “lonely for no one”(12), reinforcing the familial bond that exists within the family. 

Throughout the poem, food plays an integral role in establishing the importance in family through the act of simply eating meals together. The love the speaker feels for each of his family members, especially his father, is developed and fostered through food.

Years later, when the speaker finds himself in the same position as his father was as he pulls a splinter from his wife, he is given the opportunity to also share this “gift” of love by showing the same tenderness to his wife. When he sees the splinter in his wife, he does not associate it as a “Little Assassin”(29) or think that “Death visited”(32). Instead, he remembers his father giving him the gift of love, and turns around to give that gift to his wife so that “she feels no pain”(22).

While acts of love are present in every culture, this poem about how actions represent love is particularly touching to me as an Asian. Especially in Western cultures, love is freely given in both actions such as hugs as well as words. However, in Eastern cultures, love is not spoken of. My own parents rarely outright say “I love you” to me. Instead, they show their love through giving me more food to eat, making sure I don’t forget a jacket when it’s cold outside, and by making sure I am the best person I can be. Through their everyday actions, I feel my parents’ love. This poem about a mundane action such as pulling out a splinter representing one’s love is emblematic for all Asians who also experience this type of love.