M. Lin: A Personal Archaeology of Sound • Cleaver Magazine

M. Lin
A PERSONAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUND AS TOLD IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

1989: 乾你娘 – ‘gan4 ni3 niang2’ – ‘gan’ in the 4th tone meaning fuck. As in ‘you motherfucker’

If you passed them in a dark alley, you’d say they were criminals. If you spotted them sitting around a low metal table on square plastic stools, slinging back cold beers and hot fried anchovies, you’d swear they were crooks. Their necks tanned and leathered, their ragged white tees ominous-perfect. One stands out in lilac, a high collar with a gray dragon stitched at the lower left hemline. Most of them have one knee raised, with the other slung low to the sidewalk. To my right, a sinewy hand rests on a gnarled brown ankle and flicks ashes from a Long Life cigarette. I mimic him with my popsicle stick. Third cousin number four (in flamingo pink) hands me a bill through the smoke drifting out of his a cage of teeth. Go get some beers and—shit you have huge ears. He grins suddenly, and it’s dopey, never scary. The one the aunties said had a woman on the side. I know what a woman is and I know what a side is but at this point I can only guess. I set the beers down and sit again, studying the leathered faces and sweat dribbling down their temples. A grayer dragon spits a tremendous curse in the middle of a story. I memorize every word; no one alert enough to shoo me away. I edge my own seat closer, short legs scraping against the floor with a ragged stutter. I could fall asleep soon, my lids growing heavy and fat chin sliding down sticky palms, lulled by the cursing, the thwack of mahjong tiles, the curls of smoke blowing upward, the frequent staccato of chairs scratching against the smell of hot garlic, green chilis, the tangy char of wok-fried leeks and bacon. A motorcycle races by and honks at us; a few limbs of tobacco wave dismissively back.

2007: 趕我走- gan3 wo3 zou3 – gan in the 3rd tone meaning to rush, expel. As in ‘to hasten out’

By the time you got to the last boxes, I imagine you lost all sense of order and swung a wide stroke, left to right, and sent a heap of pens and lime green post-it notes flying to their cardboard grave. Your red couch is a lighthouse; the crates nearby stacked into a fortress of memory caves, by a dogged mason and his muddied resolutions. Maybe you kept a few biographies; you didn’t like them so much but you thought the Lincolns were “pretty okay”. Maybe you stopped and took out your phone, and stared at the keypad, and almost called to ask if I still wanted them. But maybe you didn’t even say my name in your head. You didn’t know I was here over the ocean cutting syllables into every cobbled lane. A leaden-footed script of trying to locate a feeling.

Your hands are in our old home pulling tape, cutting the air with acetate screams. Like a long armed oarsman ripping the dawn; you’re watching the water shimmy back to nothing. Like the night you watched me in the car when I said, I’ll go. That stream of rain that slid down the angles of your last interrogation.

[The suggested etymology for this is attenuat, from Latin attenuare, to make thin; from ad- + tenuis. 1: reduced especially in thickness, density, or force or 2: tapering gradually usually to a long slender point].

Like a yesterday-shaped keyhole. The sun slants low behind you and I guess you’re almost done now.

Imagine if you open the third box on your right. You’ll see it’s raining in there, too. You’ll see the camping pond from last spring, the slate grey Nissan parked askew. In that almost-dusk I’ll ask you is there lightning, and you’ll shrug. Is it safe. You say nothing and the humming in the sky answers back.

A laugh and an icy splash and then we’re lapping like birthday ribbons in the sea. The thunder above nudges lower, louder. In that different life my feet are pedaling water, strong and pressing, and I blink out of the box to look you now in the eye, to say something you can hear –

Because the shoreline is a razor edge and our strokes are bold, are even, are

not yet attenuated.

M. Lin was born in Taiwan and raised in Texas, and she now writes and teaches from her adopted home of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals including Beyond Words, Panorama, and The Closed Eye Open.