Long Nian
Long Nian
Kayla Keener
1. 快乐
xin nian kuai le, a new spring comes.
“This is my year, so I bought dragon pants,”
a high school friend relays
from New York to LA.
I don’t remind him that
your year is inauspicious–
to expect it would be otherwise
seems American to me.
I do not think that I believe
a year means anything,
and yet I think
about beginnings, trying to remember
three years back to mine, the oxen year.
A few days on, he tells me of a battle lost.
And so from east and south,
we both will migrate home to rest, recover.
I pack with plans to wear a vintage qipao left
behind for braver times,
but I recall that line the sewists say–
that only layers built from skin on out
will make the surface savor.
My voice is lost from shouting over waters,
so I fly in silence to the Bay
and pray that turbulence won’t claim our
plane with the sign of the cross.
Hovering over waters at
about ten thousand feet,
I reflect on freedom, baptism, and
the long term effects
of the chlorine on my hands.
When we land, a woman compliments my
hair pin–plastic, round, and red,
it shakes with every step–she asks me
where I bought it.
I say with effort, “overseas,”
but still don’t know what happy means.
2. 发财
gong xi fa cai,
store up treasures for yourself.
My parents feed me fruit when I arrive
on land, and I give them
a bag of See’s Chocolate coins
I’ve just found at the airport.
My parents tell me that they love me
at Ranch 99 by buying extra taro
to take away, full knowing
that a 99 Ranch
just opened near my house.
Relations between people. Related via things.
I am still voiceless, but
we have tried many remedies.
Throat flowing with loquats and honey,
elm and fat, large oceans
that make my womb begin to cramp,
we all go on a walk.
I spot small mushrooms,
pearls pushed out of dead soil
with manes like whitest flame,
mana brief before
they turn back to the dust as ink.
Life from death, but not a resurrection,
these are only shadows
of a pearl of greater price.
I leave them be in hopes that more
will grow with next year’s rains,
and ponder what I’d choose to sell
to own the taste of life.
3. 文化
Naked I came from the womb,
but in the meantime culture clothes me.
Upon return, I sneak into the cold garage.
A plastic, mothball box of silk duduo
to wear beneath the qipao that
I’d thought about while packing,
recovered from the same box
three years back.
Only this year have I grown into
the courage to wear it.
I am surprised it clasps around my neck.
It fits like it was tailor made except
a void right at the belly where
the fabric ripples loose.
I suspect the dress was made for two,
but Mom is not so sure. So I wear it,
with my hoodie red as fortune,
and underpinnings right.
Dad insists he take a picture.
As I pose, I wonder if she’s still alive–
the figure who first fit this form–
And if her time was blessed.
4. 蒙福
xin nian meng fu,
It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Into a boiling pot the fish go and the lamb.
The Lamb dipped first will flavor waters.
He will make a festive drink.
Then in go year cakes,
and the ears of rotting wood.
Suddenly, my dad and mom are both
on speaker phone with sisters.
Dad is in Ohio working on a dishwasher
whose water won’t stop running;
Mom, across Pacific,
with my aunt who cannot sit or stand
in peace. Her mind is running too.
I pour out soup into my parent’s bowls
to soothe their absent minds,
and think that all we have is prayers
that rise to God like steam.
Finally, the king prawns come,
blue cloisonné and gray, they’re
tossed in twisting, writhing waters,
Yellow, hot with salt.
Only then do I remember that
our dragon dwells among the rivers–
not Gehenna’s tombs.
His treasure not for hoarded gain, but
given out like rain,
Son of Heaven clothed in long raiment
declares all creatures clean.
So waters stir and speak like wind,
and prawns, they turn to tongues of flame.
Kayla Keener
Animator & Writer
Kayla currently works as an animator and a swimming instructor in West Los Angeles. She also engages in various forms of writing on the side. This is her first published poem. You can find some of her visual work at kkeenerportfolio.weebly.com.
Photography by Anas Hinde