Issue 1: Lucia Galloway

Chinese Mother to Her Son

         There is a farmer who uses his tractor as a village shuttle

        in order to earn enough money to buy meat.

                          

                          --Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2000

I’ll sing you a song, Little One,

while I shake out the comforters

and fold them at the foot of our cots. 

You dig with your stick on the floor near the hearth

where the hard ground gives a little.  Beat upon it––

your drum!

Steam swirls off the porridge pot,

and my breath makes little clouds.

I sing for all of us–you in your padded tunic,

your red cap.  You still have pink cheeks,

my Little Turnip!

I sing husband out the door

as yet again he goes to look at the fields,

frost-hard, for signs of thaw.

Farmer Li drives his tractor, scattering

pigeons.  Exhaust clouds hang above the road

with the smoke of our fires.  From the meat

in his soup, Li’s cheeks grow rounder.  This

and that he hauls.  Brings people to our village

and takes them away.  They pay him money.

Husband says they come to teach us

to plant kale and grow cabbage.

Your father does not own a tractor, Little One.

We have no meat to flavor our broth

with islands of fat.  Our soup is cabbage.

Under its pungent cloud my song grows thinner.

Husband says that farmers must keep planting wheat.

If no one will buy it, we’ll eat it ourselves

and raise pigs and chickens. 

What do we care for kale?

Little One, we will not go hungry.
We will yet have meat in our pot!

--Lucia Galloway




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