Tai Wei Guo

Tannenwald I

after Gustav Klimt

These walls are older than your country,
you said, So are these roads, I grumbled and
we laughed, one after the other like a pair
of footsteps, a pair of foxes, jostling
in your beat-up Yaris. Sorry I never ate
those summer berries you found. It was because
we could not name them—blueberry, elderberry,
huckleberry, sloe—you shrugged and slipped
the last asterisk between your teeth. This way,
we climbed the gutters of a mudslide, so slow,
then over the trees felled by last week’s storm,
you sailing through and me in the wake
of the choppy underbrush you knew
the way you thought I could sniff out north
on a grid. When it grew late, the trees
thronged around us, conspiring. We touched
their knees and called them “auntie” knowing
that when we grew older, we would stay up
murmuring secrets in that low cicadic hum.
This is the rock, you said, that stares with
its two eyes and frightens the little children,
moonlight falling on it in heavy cobwebs.
I placed my hand on its forehead, solid
and craggy, and thought of the monkeys
that would hang on the coat-rack at night.
You asked if I was afraid of getting lost,
leaves gossiping underneath,
and was surprised at my surprise.
no, we could walk a straight line
in any direction and I knew the forest
would fall from under our feet.

A postcard addressed to Tai Guo

and all the other incorrect names I’ve been called by

Greetings,

How are you doing? Wishing all is well. I'm writing from my new apartment, but I'm still getting your mail once in a while. Crazy how we keep living in the same places.

You know, I am wondering. Do you write angry poems?
Like: "To the Man On The Street / Who Asked If I / Spoke English and Then Yelled 'Hey / Egg Roll' When I Ignored Him"
Like: "To the Man Who Told Me / I Was Quiet and Called Out / 'Say Buh-Bye Now' As I Left the Room"
Like: "To Every Fucking Person Who Wants / to Know / If I Am Related / to Ai Weiwei: You Obviously / Don't Want to Know."
Like: "Fuck You. and You. and You / Most of All."

Because lately I've just been writing ambivalent poems, like:

- When I was a Kid My Mom Told Everyone Her Name Means Colorful Ice and Now She Goes by Amy and I Don't Know Which I Hate More.
- When I File My Dad's Unemployment Claim Every Week.
- When I Am Definitely a Gentrifier in the Neighborhood of the Guy Who Yelled Egg Roll.
- When My Parents Delivered Groceries to Me and I Had a Panic Attack Thinking How My Mother's Tongue is Not My Own.
- What Is It That I Owe My Heritage and Does It Circumscribe Me?
- For Example, is it OK to Date White People?
- What About Men?

I miss those smoky rooms filled with sober kids. The world is so wide now and I am not so well-traveled.

Anyways, take care of yourself. Please say hi to Mr. Wei for me.

All the best,