ORCHARD OF KNOWING
Into the shadows I go
and find you, gorgeous as your necklace
of nine hundred and ninety-nine index fingers.
All of them point at me
as the kill to complete your mission:
to return to your kingdom by returning to your king a thousand human sacrifices.
You chase me. You swing your sword
yet I remain beyond your reach. I’ll surrender, I tell you,
when you detach from your received idea of purpose.
So you do. You set down your weapon.
But I didn’t mean the blade in your hand.
I meant the blade in your mind.
INCIDENT REPORT
I had a form.
The form said
Name of victim. The form named me.
The form was a form of naming. Naming gave me form.
The form said
Time of incident. Time could be measured.
The Incident could be defined. Both had a form.
Both were a form of naming. The form said
Age.
Age could be measured by Time.
Age could be defined by the Incident.
The Incident occurred on the night before my twenty-first birthday.
The Time was night as night became night. The Incident occurred in my room at the Time. The Time occurred to me after the Incident.
The form said
Race or ethnicity.
Both were constructs. Both marked me.
Both had a form.
Both were a form of naming.
Naming was marking.
I marked the form.
(Asian. Bottom. 4 Now.) I was a construct.
(Looking 4 Fun. No Strings Attached.) I was unremarkable.
The form said
Sex.
The form listed my options.
I had no option.
I went along with the Sex. The Sex had a Name.
(I won’t say the Name.) Both marked me.
The form said
Affiliation. Everything started out fine. The form said
Residence.
I unlocked the door.
I misread
Affiliation as
Affliction. The Name entered.
I misread
Residence as
Residual. The Name kissed me.
The form said
Alcohol or drugs used at the time of incident.
I was having a good time.
The form said
Relationship with the assailant prior to incident. I did the thing I was good at.
The form said
Type of coercion or force involved.
The Name hit me.
The form said
Please specify. The Name choked me.
The form said
Ability to consent was inhibited by. The Name pressed a white towel against my face.
The form said
Please specify. The towel smelled like sugar.
Please specify. An ice cream truck drove by.
(Please.) I heard the song.
SCHEHERAZADE/SCHEHERAZADE
1
Waking again to the spartan furnishing—brass
knobs and coat hooks, curtain
moth-gnawed and yellowing, plastic mattress
atop a twin frame, photograph of me and my mother turned away, book from a class
on empire and literature that told the story of a story-
teller who evades the end awaiting her
each morning by giving the king not her body but her imagination each night
for a thousand and one nights—what humiliated me as I relived my death in that room without sunrise
wasn’t my desire for light but my desire for more darkness.
2
Except for the glow of distant ships
nothing could be seen.
My mother, staring into
the dark, waiting for the light
as she waited years ago
for another ship to take her from her
life, adjusted her glasses.
The past came into view:
line of women. Line of soldiers.
Red sand beach. Sand red with
blood. Waves racing in.
A soldier. His rifle. My mother
on her knees. Waves retreating.
Once upon a time, she began.
3
In a version of the story there’s no ocean. No waves racing in. No waves retreating. Their behavior neither the behavior of memory nor the past. In a version of the story
there’s no soldier. No rifle. No bullet wound marking skull after skull like a period at the end of a sentence. No final thought for each prisoner. In a version of the story
there’s no sand. No beach. No adjective to modify or justify the washed-away blood. No propaganda for beauty. No grotesque agenda. In a version of the story
there’s no line of women robbed of their womanhood. No prayers. No answering bodhisattva. No means to know if no answer is the answer. In a version of the story
there’s no ship. No going forward. No getting back. No inner compass or magnetic field or spinning needle or stars to tell my mother where she is. In a version of the story
there’s no story. No sleepless dawn. No twilight.
Nothing happened. My mother disappears whatever blights her the way she now makes her living: altering and tailoring the story
as though the truth were trousers to be hemmed. She changes and is changed by how
she tells her story. There is no truth. Only a version. Aversion. A verge. A vengeance.
4
With him I had an audience. Both heads
at attention. Ravenous. A kind of ravishing.
Tell me you like it. I told him I liked it.
Tell me how bad you want it. I told him I wanted it bad, maybe, because I did want, badly, to
be remade, changed so thoroughly
at the core of my being, the corridor through which he entered like a king,
though he was far from a king, and in doing so
took me, at least part of me, with him. I was willing by then, by force, to entertain my executioner.
I stopped punching. Kicking. Resisting
what I couldn’t resist. What he wanted to hear
I told him. I made my pussy talk. I found in violence a voice.
5
Across the table from my mother I filled two cups with tea.
We sat in silence. We sipped in silence.
Her silence demanding mine.
Some suffering we’d rather not know so we don’t suffer knowledge
calling on us in the name of love
to blame ourselves and to appropriate the pain
because we think of pain and blame
as objects requiring purpose and possession.
That’s not love. That has no name.
We finished our tea. We set down our cups.
What do you see? Leaves. Water.
Waves. Ships. Bodies. Bullets. No shore.
6
Let me be clear.
Inside this story is another story. The frame is a door.
Behind the door is another door.
Both the room and the king are literal and figurative. To use figurative language is to make an argument.
Like Scheherazade my mother and I cleave to and from our story. Like Scheherazade ours is a story of refrain.
The word
refrain means not just
resist but also
repetition. Repetition is emphasis.
The emphasis being the purpose for repetition. My purpose is precision.
Even when I’m unclear I’m deliberate.
When I’m deliberate I’m liberated.
7
Night after night
I returned to the room. Windows closed. Drapes drawn.
Neither spring nor starlight
to ignite the air. Only his breath lingering on the pillowcase. His face
in the mirror like the image of a swan
in a lake. I was the lake
doubling and doubting his image. Could I understand what happened if I understood him? Could I slake my rage
if I knew what the next day had planned?
To-go containers. Emails. Pills. Laundry. More laundry.
At the foot of the bed, I decided there had to be a way
out. There
was the way out.
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Of the books he wrote about me, my favorite is the book Master had bound with my skin.
De humani corporis fabrica. Am I vain?
Born poor. Illiterate. Oblivious to any life but this,
never did I expect perpetuity. Never did I expect a man to want me
the way he wanted me. Master didn’t care
how ugly I was. My nose flat. My thighs fat. My teeth the color of horse shit. Master dug me out
from the ground. He took my corpse into his arms. He held me so close
I forgot I was a body. I became his body
of work. Biology. Physiology. Anatomy. Master, doubting
the Old Masters, believed doubt could draw a new map to the interior.
In his classroom at the university, Master had me undressed and laid
on a table for his pupils
to see. He descended from his dais with the dynamism of a god walking among his disciples. Whatever he dictated they scribbled
on their slates, lapping his theories and thoughts
like dogs lapping piss from a chamber pot.
Some want to be holy. Some want to be human. Some want to believe the nature of the human revealed reveals the nature of the holy.
As Master opened me—groin hard
against my hips, hands in my guts—I opened him. I gave him
nerve. Tendon. Muscle. Ventricle. Mandible. Sternum. Tibia. Atria. Labia.
Every aspect of myself
I hadn’t resource or reason to fathom—heft of the mind, mechanics
of the heart—he dissected. Documented. Paraded before his surgical circus. His spectators and skeptics
oohing and aahing. Shuffling in their seats. Fanning back the heat.
Their interest with what was found in me formed
from their interest with what could be in them . . .
I wanted to tell them that
they weren’t special. They had no soul
beyond their investment in the function of the soul. Their gaze
not absolute. Not pure. Not empirical. Only imperial. Impure. Approximate.
I wanted to tell them that there was much they’d never know. They thought they knew
what knowledge was. But knowledge
was me: the edge of doubt and belief, of what persists Master after Master, reified and repudiated, preserved
in a Providence library—air-conditioned, light-controlled—
touched and retouched, awaiting a new Master to approach the edge.
THE NIGHTMARE: OIL ON CANVAS: HENRY FUSELI: 1781
Too hot to
rest, I toss
my arms off the bed. My night-
gown wet with
sweat. I feel you
—a sack of
scavenged skulls
on my chest
—sipping
the salt from
my breasts. Imp.
Incubus. Im-
pulse. You and
me like a mare
that must be
broken in
by breaking in-
to. Tamed is
how fire is
by giving itself something to destroy:
it destroys it-
self. Who
can deter-
mine what’s inside
another?
What is risked
when we enter?
Caliper. Forceps.
Scalpel. Oculus.
Perhaps you’re
the wilderness
that waits with-
in me. Perhaps an-
other mystery, I
open beneath
you. Yoked. Harnessed.
Paralyzed.
At once a-
wake and a-
sleep. I nay.
I knock
over the kerosene
lamp. Light of
the rational
mind snuffed. Shadow
of shadows.
Because I can’t
see, I sense.
Your thumb
thrumming
my mouth. A
command. Arch-
angel. Vision
of invasion.
Insemination.
Copyright © 2022 by Paul Tran. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
