Bibliofreakblog

FreeVerse: China Camp, California

Since I just finished and reviewed Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, which is about Asian-Americans in Seattle, I thought I would find something from poetry collection called Diaspora: Poetry of Displacement, edited by Virgil Suarez and Ryan G Van Cleave.

Turns out that Diaspora has a conspicuous lack of Asian Poets.  It has over 300 pages of poetry, and only one poet from Washington state (as far as I can tell from the bios)–and that’s Sherman Alexie, who I love, don’t get me wrong, but isn’t really the vibe I’m going for.

Finally, I found a poem I liked that seemed to fit what I have been thinking about.  Maybe it stood out to me because the title has the word “China” in it.  Maybe because the author, Kim Addonizio is going to be reading in Seattle tomorrow, and I know this because part of my job is to compile the literary events calendar.  Maybe because it’s the second poem in the book.

As always, thanks to Cara for hosting FreeVerse. 

“China Camp, California” by Kim Addonizio

Here’s the long trough, covered by a screen,
where they claned shrimp.
Easier to imagine their catch
than to glimpse the ghosts of the fishermen
who lived here in these few wood buildings,
some now in need of repair, tin-roofed,
boarded windows whose gaps we peer through
to see shadowed dirt, a rusted wheelbarrow.
Of their boats, only a long hull remains,
hauled to the sand and half-sunk there,
surrounded by chain link.
Yet everything is the same: the bay,
tamed by the curve of land that makes the cove,
still curls in
easily as hands turning over
to close, and close again, a book whose pages
ceaselessly open.  Shards of their dishes
and rice bowls wash back
with the frail skeletons of crabs, glass
dulled and polished, indecipherable bits
of broken shells, jade-green kelp.
It’s said they were driven out by hatred,
or concern that they’d leave nothing
for the next boats, but no one recorded
where they went.  This was the home they made,
miles from China: brief shore,
a sky brushed with clouds,
gulls following them in each sunset,
the women stirring soup
with buried spoons, lost silk
of their sashes, black hair unpinned
and carried out with the tied,
tangling in the empty nets and sinking
to the coldest dark water.