Tale of Pearl-Grain Rice and Other Poems

We lived practically on air,
made ourselves small
as a wicker basket
and occupied no more

than a corner, not even a closet
or dresser drawer for our clothes
is how we got through college,
taking out the barest of minimum loans.

It wasn’t that long ago—
earth’s warming became a worry,
over-population a crisis.
We cheered oil embargoes,
convinced solar power would take over—

Not that long ago like when
our grandfathers walked to school
ten miles in snow
in holey shoes. And not so long ago
when our fathers grew up

in three-room shacks
and tore catalog pages in an outhouse—
We predicted shortages, starvation,
extinction, not to mention

wars and bad weather.
We grieved the disappearance
of species and wetlands, mourned
the division of bottom-land,
the clear-cutting of forests.

This is where 20-pound sacks of rice come in,
like organic manna from heaven.
A food subsidy from we-didn’t-care-who.
Save the earth with brown rice!
(Complemented with beans and American cheese.)

Brown rice with its hull dust
that could ignite silos.
And tiny pebbles you better
pick out before cooking
or you’d be adding a dentist

to your list of bad debt.
Rice, day in and day out
(and don’t forget
beans for complete protein).

Cheap college, cheap rent. Plentiful
run-down flats and falling-down houses
to be shared. I could hitchhike
and ride my bike anywhere. Living on rice.

In the end, rice wasn’t so perfect.
It transformed native marsh into miles upon miles
of rice paddies. Pillars of black smoke
burned our eyes every fall.

And then those paddies gave way
to zero lot line tracts, rows of obese homes.
Hello, children. After all that rice
your parents decided they couldn’t be

small anymore. You are tiny
and we are big.
Our houses are big. Our cars are big.
Everything we do is bigger than big.

And if we strike a match all at once,
there will be a very big bang.

This is temporary, everyone insists,
Jerry can move into the spare bedroom,
our son’s boxes stacked near a closet full of laundry.
He’s thankful we’re here for him
until his Econoline van is fixed, the prized possession

that holds all his possessions.
The van that serves as home.
My husband opens the hood,
checks wiring and gaskets,
inspects the propane stove

which has the potential to blow up the garage.
Without consulting anyone,
in a fit of do-good zeal mixed with guilt
he decides to gut the van.
Gut Jerry’s home.

My brother-in-law sleeps
in a nylon bag laid atop the bed
refusing to slip between the clean sheets,
tries to pee nightly into a plastic apple juice bottle
though the bathroom is a few steps away.

He takes showers in the backyard,
sorry he broke the faucet in our tub.
This is temporary.
Until his van
is like new.

The mother with glassy eyes
nursing her baby in Darfur.
She seems to be dreaming
but she’s dreaming of nothing
except feeding her family.

Sorry to bring up Darfur,
it just came to me—
she’s a perfect example
of living in the moment.

Hunger clamped to her breast,
she can’t see
beyond the present.
She doesn’t know
she can be anything, if only

she imagines hard enough.
A surgeon for example,
or an opera diva,
or even president.

Some people are bad at imagining,
always picturing the wrong things:
sweeper of dirt floors, carrier of water jars,
or maybe gatherer
of twigs to cook mush.

Right now, I’m imagining
I’m a giantess wearing a cornucopia
headdress and a bra of gold coins.
My laundry dries in the sun
while I tan my washboard belly.

The more people have,
the better they are
at imagining. And that is why
the rich get richer.

It must be the Portuguese, it’s the Portuguese
in you, kids would say about my olive skin
not knowing anything about other countries
or ethnicity.

We would say in school:
the English had queens, the Scotch invented whiskey,
the Irish had a famine, the French drank wine,
the Germans made beer.
The Portuguese had Magellan.

And once they all ruled
all the continents and all the high seas,
and they were great invaders and colonizers.
That’s how we got here.

Only the Indians had reservations
and my Portuguese was Azores.
My great-grandpa was a whaler and great-grandma was a tailor.
In eighteen-something, they arrived from Pico and Faial (no one knew how
to spell these), came through Ellis Island,

settled in Rhode Island.
My father’s family came mid-seventeen hundreds
from someplace in Germany, landed somewhere
in Pennsylvania. His father left Texas at twelve

and hopped a train. He was part English, French,
Scotch-Irish. Somebody came from Ulster, somebody
married a girl, last name French.
My mother’s-mother’s mother came from Galway,
married a German tailor. Another tailor in the family.

They somehow arrived at Eureka!
Had ten kids. Few records, names and places sketchy.
My maternal grandpa drove a truck for People’s Bakery
in Berkeley. He was a card-carrying Commie.

On the side, he raised chickens and shoveled manure.
Played ragtime piano on Saturday nights.
A sister farmed apricots in San Jose.
Some went to Canada, some came back.

Some went to Kansas then on to Oklahoma
where they ran for land. Some eked along
the high plains to Colorado. Some wound up in Oakland,
worked for Southern Pacific and for Ma Bell.

Sewing, sowing, earth grubbing, homesteading
in thin soil at high altitudes, the Government
boasted was fertile and rich; in deep loam at low
altitudes, the Government said was salty
and best left fallow. Dirt roads turned to blacktop

everywhere. Great opportunity. If only the seeds
would stay put and take root.
This is only a fraction of the story,
never mind service in the military.

I forgot this: My father said
we had a little Indian. Maybe
Cherokee or Sac and Fox, he thought.
Not enough for any money or land.
Later I learned: the Indian part came from Sarah Fox,

who was the common-law wife of my great
great-great-great grandfather on my father’s mother’s side,
and she bore fourteen. A twenty-foot obelisk marks
her husband’s grave near Stillwater. Sarah’s name
etched in miniscule lettering on the back hints at

woes endured and stories scattered. This hasn’t mattered.
I have no ethnic identity.

Look, have toys dropped? (Pan to Zodiac Barbie,
a real killer doll.)
Is dining out more within reach? (Zoom in
on triple bypass burger.)

Are car loans more attainable? (Pan to SUV
with cowcatcher grill.)
Has everything become cheaper?
That is, “more affordable?”

Bread is rising, yes,
and dairies can’t skim profits off milk
and meat cuts into a bigger chunk
of your budget. Ok, and gas is volatile.

Is housing at least collapsing?
Let’s hope rents are flat.