How Festive the Ambulance. Kim Fu

      

      How Festive the Ambulance

      Copyright © Kim Fu, 2016

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].

      Nightwood Editions

      P.O. Box 1779

      Gibsons, BC V0N 1V0

      Canada

       www.nightwoodeditions.com

      Cover design & typography: Carleton Wilson

      Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.

      This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled,

      ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free

      and printed with vegetable-based dyes.

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      CIP data available from Library and Archives Canada.

      ISBN 978-0-88971-321-5 · 0-88971-321-9

      For the Fu Women:

      My Mother, Sisters and Nieces

      The Pig Man / I Have a Forgettable Face

      I have a forgettable face. It allows me to belch in public, to fart, to wipe snot on my sleeve, because I don’t know these people and they won’t remember me. I order meatball subs with marinara sauce and racks of ribs and uncracked lobsters, any food that might merit a bib, because no one is watching. I slurp anything that can be slurped. I hold up the grocery line counting out my pennies, which—even though she just listened to me run through my eleventy-twelves and sickity-nons—the cashier has to count again. I stretch across three seats on the bus and whack the lap of a man in a wheelchair, looking for the snooze button. I introduce myself four times before you remember. What luxury to be not tall not short not fat not thin, above all not beautiful, to have the same face as Charlie Brown: dot, dot, quivering line of anguish. I get to be disgusting. What does the little red-headed girl get? She’s counting her valentines, talking in a grown-up’s wah-wah voice. She’s always off-camera, where perfection lives.

      The Pig Man / Women That Love Too Much

      I imagined them in small, idle rooms, sharpening their beaks with nail files, women that love too much, as on a magazine cover: women, do you love too much? On the desks and patterned-papered walls, rotary phones that don’t ring and require a switchboard. Doors with knockers glued in place and disconnected doorbells. I imagined them waiting for me in a universe where there are no other activities, or all other activities are meaningless, and every action is inverted into denial: don’t eat for me, ladies, wring the oil from your feathers, ladies, don’t sing for me, ladies, save your voice. My life, meanwhile, like a boar in a china shop. Behold the fragile things that shatter on my tusks and bucking hooves! Worship the god of destruction! Then they descended. Instead of nipping at the ticks on my back, grooming my bristles and dropping fattened worms into my mouth, instead of riding my back wherever I felt like going, they lifted me in their talons like predatory eagles, like I was a mere fish who could suffocate by the gills. They were silent, swift, black. Their mothers stayed on the telephone wire, watched the spectacle. A murder of mothers with that look in their eyes: You should have known, pig. You should have known.

      The Pig Man / The Dark Circus

      I.

      Sad-face clowns play accordion, euphonium and clarinet,

      joyless Balkan melodies in a minor key. Audience volunteers

      are tricked into digging a pit at centre ring.

      The lions are losing their hair, dry cough

      instead of roar. Wolf children sniff along the ground,

      eat discarded popcorn kernels and snarl convincingly

      until a lady in the front row shrieks, These are real children!

      I am the star attraction, the pig-man,

      bristle-bearded, faintly familiar: were we once neighbours?

      Did you leave your daughters with me during an emergency—

      your wife had heart palpitations and you didn’t know

      if it was serious, and you had seen me,

      reading on my porch, sweeping leaves, quiet, knowable,

      well-intentioned in the way of the elderly—

      PIG MAN! you scream, as loud as you know how.

      II.

      The children were always wolves, fairy-tale tricksters,

      bursting out of cloaks with bits of grandma in their teeth,

      huffing and puffing while I watched through the windows

      of my solid brick house. They used to believe my stories.

      I sent them to the pristine beaches of my childhood

      (the water now choked with red algae, primordial soup

      sucking them under, higher mammals with tumours

      where their eyes should be, slick tributaries on fire),

      sold them useless toys, convinced them that

      boredom was sickness and I had the cure.

      Now they stalk through the streets in ski masks,

      furry snouts protruding from cut holes,

      smashing storefronts and calling for me.

      PIG MAN! they cry, voices cracking pubescent:

       You will pay for what you’ve done.

      My house holds fast. I get old and older. They forget

      you cannot extort the dead. The belly is bacon,

      the organs are sweetbreads. The mind is the brain

      and the brain is for aspic.

      The unicorn princess

      plays pretend at the bridal shop.

      They pull the gowns on carefully

      so her horn doesn’t pierce the tulle,

      so the cupcake bustle and spreading trains

      drape across her back half and all four legs.

      She nickers in pleasure at her reflection,

      tells the long story of how she met

      her imaginary fiancé, describes the venue

      in quotes from a magazine:

       weathered wood demands muslin