Nellie’s 91st Birthday

Celebrating Nellie’s 91st birthday! #poetryblooms

Ode to the big knife

Ai aw in Hoisan-wa
Big blue scheme the slant and the sheen
Chopping in rhythm’s precision
Delivering lobster by hand shaped as its original form
Eloquent in chef’s hand
Feast for eyes and soul
Gargantuan yet minuscule
High how high the culinary arts
Just practice more practice, no
Kneeling but kowtowing of sorts
Love for beauty of cadence’s song its
Marinade and dance and
No nullification because
Operatives of beauteous realm
Purity of practice thrums and hums
Quintuplet of spirit without
Reluctance creating
Sweet and future memories of
Taste the ai aw ai aw dai doh cleaver
Under and over your weight in hands
Vendors and makers, workers
Weathering customs through dynasties and wars
Xenial or courtesan or kitchen maid the
Yelps nowhere the materiality the
Zaniness of frowns and grins the immaculate joy

Nellie Wong
© 2023 Nellie Wong

Write as if

Death flies a magpie over the sea
as if night is eternal
forgetful of sunbeams
sand between your toes
As if as if forests become your home where water
buffaloes roam in moon light amid tigers unseen
Your bedroom the worlds you traveled
As if the wooden pig with wings floats in midair
The scroll of black calligraphy beckons dawn of success
After all, the flowers encased in glass are still
brushes and pens
pencils with no erasers now
push and pull, pump
the filaments of breath
and desire as if dying
is living and writing.

Nellie Wong
© 2025 Nellie Wong

Toward Midnight

Reading Mural into
The night you face death in fragments in dream
You wander hills skyscrapers link
Arms with your sister Lai
Both warm in overcoats
Against the chill
No cellphone in your pocket
Identity blurred in white space
Walking unnamed streets
Ignoring detritus
Hoping for glimpses
Of oranges and pomelos
The man in a coolie hat and worn suit
Staring at lanterns
Lost in strings of the erhu the chatter
Of a pigtailed girl holding her grandmother’s hand
Gripping Lai’s hands
That once brushed bamboo
Cat pawing grass
You laugh
toward
Siew yeh a midnight bite
Periwinkle snails
steaming in black bean sauce
in old Chinatown.

Nellie Wong
© 2024 Nellie Wong

Beloved

A language that sings, tickles the funny bones
A dialect of guts and earth and bones
Understood or not, a mystery
Of sound, echoes and dreams
Of faraway lands
Without language, there is no sea,
There is no sky, no flowers, no grief
Sportswriters writing slam dunk,
Never spitting on home plate
Being called foreigner, hearing
Go home, you came to steal
American jobs
Why don’t you use chopsticks right?
Do you really eat snake?
Was it George Burns who said
If you turn 90 upside down,
You’d be 60?
Beloved the novel by Toni Morrison
Books filling the bedroom,
The living room
Words in print, hieroglyphics
In caves
First scribbling by a child
Sundew glistening in sunlight
Protest placards on city streets
Defend Abortion Rights!
Women will decide!
Lyrics, “This Land is Your Land”
Audre Lorde saying
You don’t have to be inspired to write
Sounds in the night
Silence of language
coursing through your veins.

Magical thinking

Fly me to the moon
Forget about hanging laundry
But wait! If we hang laundry
Around the moon’s circumference,
Aliens for sure will see that humans
Forever labor
So fly me and you to the moon
Where we’ll sup on immortal peaches
Monkey King will share
And so will the Goddess of Mercy
She’ll even welcome the God
Of Literature and War
She’ll introduce you to Ng Mui
Who invented Wing Chun
So your energy breathes life
Oh! Brother Sun wants to join
The celebration of feast
Oranges the wine on our lips
The laundry glowing with light

Above: Pictorial Hanging Illustrating the Feast of Peaches | https://collections.artsmia.org/art/16871/pictorial-hanging-illustrating-the-feast-of-peaches-china | China, late 18th century, Minnesota Institute of Art