Learning Chinese

we exist not as liquid but smoke
in the highlight of my father’s joint
squint-eyed exhale from a lawn chair in the garage

he couples us there, I become his imagining
of my mother, you take his place

long stalks, the she-wolf born, wildhair
licking red hung over the body’s howlsong

you are hu, barbarian fox, I tame
in the twilight dance of hallucinogen

incense, a coil of limbs,
claw and tooth ecstasy-juice shui

we are liquid, sap running in devil-light
the buzz fluorescent becomes mystic drone

guang resounds over hills
mounds of metal my father transforms

birth-hour caul still over his eyes
indigo transcendent

he speaks from the gate of God
shui long and hung hu
water wolf, red fox

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Copyright © Raina Leon 2007

Raina J. León, Cave Canem fellow and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective and the Friday Noon Poets, is currently a doctoral student in education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Her poetry has been featured in New York City through the LouderArts Project Cave Canem spotlight at Bar 13, Cornelia Street Café, the Nuyorican Poets Café, and the Bowery Poetry Club. She has also been featured around the country: at bookstores, festivals and conferences such as Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh, Virginia Festival of the Book, and the College English Association Conference 2006. She has been published in Torch, Poetic Voices without Borders, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology of Voices from Marginalized Spaces, AntiMuse, Farmhouse Magazine, Furnace Review, Constellation Magazine and Tiger's Eye Journal among others.