Identity

Illustration by Angelina Bambina

Warm-Up Writing

PART 1: Tell me two truths and a lie about yourself.
 PART 2: Now, write a poem about yourself in which nothing is true.  Write for 10 minutes.

Mentor Poem

Courtyard
DARIEN HSU GEE
 
Her new family has her dowry—her chickens have become his chickens. Clipped wings fly the short distance to nowhere. Her future husband has returned to the village. His parents had sent a message to the university: Come home quickly. There is an emergency. It took several days to make the journey and he arrived weary, expecting an ailing father. Instead, a wedding ceremony with him as the man of honor, and her, sitting on the bed, dressed and waiting, vision obscured. She tries to imagine what he looks like. When he lifts the heavy red veil from her face, she sees kind eyes. She lies with him that night, spreads her legs and consecrates the marital bed. The next morning, she is alone. Her new husband has returned to school in Shanghai, a city she has only heard of. Her husband is an educated man, she cannot read or write. He is Jīdūjiào—a Christian. No one in the village understands this, not even his own parents. She tends the graves of his ancestors, looks after his mother and father as if they were her own. Nine months later, a girl is born, company for a short time—the baby dies an infant. Still he does not return. All that remains is a handful of chickens, the rest slaughtered for her wedding banquet.

Source: Poetry Daily .  Originally published in Other Small Histories, Poetry Society of America.  Copyright © 2020 by Darien Hsu Gee.

ABOUT THIS POEM: “Courtyard” is about my grandfather’s first wife, an unnamed woman he married in an arranged village wedding. He left shortly after the ceremony and never returned. This marriage is dismissed in my family as one that “didn’t count,” as well as the daughter she gave birth to who died, but it counted to me. She was part of the legacy of my matrilineal line—I didn’t want her forgotten.  ​

Writing Prompts

Tell the story of someone who “didn’t count.”

• Make it a succinct poem that crystallizes key details about the person’s life. Make it a succinct by cutting right to the point, barely covering the known details.
• Or do just the opposite, flourish the details to make the person count more.

For Discussion

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further PossibilitiesCHEN CHEN
 
To be a good
ex/current friend for R. To be one last

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship
advice for L. To be advice

for my mother. To be a more comfortable
hospital bed for my mother. To be

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,
America for my uncle, who wants to be China

for me. To be a country of trafficless roads
& a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go

fast. To be a cyclone
of laughter when my parents say

their new coworker is like that, they can tell
because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t,

can’t be one of them. To be the one
my parents raised me to be--

a season from the planet
of planet-sized storms.

​To be a backpack of PB&J & every
thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming

their own storms. To be, for me, nobody,
homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D

& be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars,
simple decoration for the new apartment

with you. To be close, J.,
to everything that is close to you--

blue blanket, red cup, green shoes
with pink laces.

To be the blue & the red.
The green, the hot pink.

Source:  Originally published in When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org, 2017). Found at poetryfoundation.org