When I was eleven I made a statue
of my grandfather. My teacher
said we could pick anyone.
Most of the boys picked quarterbacks.
I painted his hair white
because I didn’t have gray.
I asked my teacher
how to do his skin.
She said, “Yellow
like you.” I looked
at my own hand
confused. How did she know
what my last name 黃 meant?
Something about his nose,
I couldn’t get right.
That clever wrinkle
the way it would flatten
grow long
like his eyes
whenever my dad straightened me
with a ruler.
My teacher said, “Let me help.”
And she made his nose like hers
high and narrow.
“But It doesn’t look like him.”
“Yes, but doesn’t he look handsome?”
About his arms, she said,
“They’re too long,”
I shook my head. He could
scoop me at his knees
and not bend.
He could even reach
my dad’s shoulder to say
好啦夠了that’s enough.
“You mix in dark drops
to make gray,” my teacher said.
But the palette lacked
red like the drops he’d seen in the toilet.
Or black, night on the white
maps of his bones. Or blue, heavy like
distance, wide as
the Pacific.
“I’m done,” I whispered, setting him
next to Brett Favre. All around him
muscles, jerseys, balls.
But only 阿公 stood, his face a cartoon sun.
“Wait,” I said and I painted his smile.
Albert Hwang is a Taiwanese American poet from Illinois. He is a James B. Reston New York Times Gold Key winner (Scholastic Arts & Writing) and a Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize winner (TaiwaneseAmerican.org). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Inscape Journal, The Lake, Unbroken Journal, New Verse News, and other publications.
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