Food Court - Poetry by Timothy Kaiser

my father-in-law at twenty
when mother-in-law goes to the mainland
for a few days
father-in-law will take off his shirt
unwire the ancestral wok from the ancestral nail
mix salt and steam and cigarette ash into the fried rice
he learned to make in London.

in London when he was twenty
standing by a snowy statue in Trafalgar Square
someone taking black and white snapshots of him
wearing an impressive white woman
in an expensive white hat.

he handsome in a dark suit
speaking dishwasher English yet
the way he holds his cigarette
the way he leans towards her
dismisses the camera the cold
the woman must have understood.

I have seen those pictures
my wife knows where they are hidden
and he once told me when others were in bed
how on the ship from Hong Kong to London
there was more than one fistfight with gwei lo
except when the ship stopped in Egypt
a ceasefire to see the Sphinx
he has lost the photos, he says,
smiling
coughing
checking his heart
blowing smoke away from me,
too long ago.

for my father-in-law at twenty
the sands of Egypt spicy under his feet
fists bloodied against condescension
stacks of unwashed dishes awaiting his arrival in London
and a mysterious white woman
smiling at him from under an expensive white hat
the riddles of the Sphinx must once have seemed
no more difficult than striking a match
on ice.

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