Unparented Rituals

My grandfather devours carambola in the bathtub,
the faucet’s underlip weeps, clotted ochres where

the enamel resigned. Something unsaintly ferments
in the belly of a drain, or apple cores, gravid and

decembered twice. Legacy, apparently, is more than
an heirloom earring behind the left clavicle. Turns out

it’s tendon deep. It is grandfather, womb-slick and
naked, demanding lapis soap instead of alabaster

because it reeked of the orderly who shaved him bald.
He claimed Buddha over geometries, psalmed-oranges

now vesper-lobed. I crooned him collapsing inward,
he retorted as something unfurling. In sleep, I haunt

mansions with thirteen latrines and not a single pane
of grass. The doors keen for the phoneme of my

father’s spine. In July, cicadas scream into boiling kettles.
I fall deliriously into a girl’s ghost, her voice filtered through

rotting beams. We never touched, I gargle vowels of her name.
What catechism absolves the child who smell starfruit

and thinks bruise, not nectar? When I autopsied fruits till
my thumbs blushed pulp, a boy sneered, asking if my

tears had subtitles. Later I was handed three days of
institutional silence. Tell me, how do you become

less animal without becoming more ghost? I sleep
under the table and utter rotisserie tongues. I say,

I cracked all the windows, the moon spilled down like
soup. Still, the birds arrive, with names in their beaks.

This is not the afterlife.

Penny Wei is from Shanghai and Massachusetts. She has been recognized by the Longfellow House, The Word Works and more.