Persimmons a la Li Young Lee

 

Persimmons a la Li Young Lee

 

After reading Li Young Lee’s “Persimmons”,

the professor turned to me

as if I had something interesting to say.

 

What to say of precision? What to say of persimmons?

Precision was what my father demanded,

even when cutting persimmons,

his words sharper than the knife in my hand,

the knife trembling into the fruit,

hoping for perfect slices,

the slices too perfect to eat.

 

What to say of the fullness of love?

Choosing persimmons doesn’t require precision,

since they all are bittersweet,

like first love.

 

The first time I ever saw you,

the crowd of heads and bodies

spliced your motions into stills:

long, straight black hair,

the stillness of Degas’ dancing ballerinas

and your penetrating eyes,

marble-like. Your slender hand

and slender fingers pointing out

the direction of suggested movement.

 

The way each image seemed to spill over

into the next:

your hair fell across your face,

your hand brushed it aside,

and your eyes met mine,

 

and I crumbled

 

I once asked my father if persimmons originated in China.

Those Chinese don’t value persimmons the way we do,

he said.

 

I recognized the signs of progression:

the long silences over the phone,

the trifling arguments,

the dwindling jealousies,

the serious arguments,

the crying and the threats.

 

I thought I could contain the continuity

if I screamed and shouted a little longer, a little louder.

Break-up and make up.

Keep each event separate from one another,

prevent one from snowballing into the next;

I had already experienced the power of continuity.

 

I had even named the phases of my life.

Childhood. Puberty. Adulthood.

Life (Lives) Before (After) You.

I’d also started re-organizing my photographs,

filling each phase appropriately,

when I happened upon a photograph of my father in his youth

and mistook it for my own.

Life continues in discrete, separate vessels.

 

My father calls me into the living room

and bids me to bring him a persimmon.

I comply and head over to the fridge,

taking out a persimmon, brown spotted,

and a knife and a plate.

He shakes his head. No.

He squeezes the fruit gently. Hong-shi.

He takes the fruit into his left hand

and tears away the stem with his right.

And he dives in to the revealed flesh,

slurping,

and re-emerges wearing a smile

and a faint, orange moustache.

Enjoying life doesn’t require precision.

 

I thought we had to achieve a series of benchmarks

in order to succeed.

Say the “l” word by the 3^rd month.

Mutually abandon friends.

Visit each others’ families.

Take a trip by ourselves to Europe.

 

When we lost our way in England,

when we found refuge at an old water mill,

I knew it wasn’t right:

the water wheel turning,

each compartment filling and emptying,

solely by the power of the flow

of water.