Often, I think of a young Lee Jun-Fan—
just a student at the University of Washington—
in the days before he met his wife, entering his prime.
I see him swinging his elbows, pushing out hips
with Abuela, also new, out of place
& foreign to Seattle at the time.
Together, they move up and down
the smoke-filled parlor above Ruby Chow’s.
Side by side, a-five, six, seven, eight—
Of course, the pride of Hong Kong moves like water.
But the surprise is the short, apple-faced woman
from Texas, parts unknown.
She keeps pace with the Little Dragon, again & again
they go, working up a sweat, slugging Canadian Club
with crushed ice until the dawn.
There is not enough oxygen to talk.
There are too many people.
There is just enough light for them to lock eyes.
She is not concerned with the jaguar circling the block.
She knows her heart is still hers
until she goes outside.
Vincent Antonio Rendoni is the author of A Grito Contest in the Afterlife, which was the winner of the 2022 Catamaran Poetry Prize for West Coast Poets as selected by Dorianne Laux. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions multiple times and has appeared/will appear in Prairie Schooner, Sycamore Review, Vestal Review, The Texas Review, and So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Image: pinterest.com
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