Guest: First Translation
Caroline Mei-Lin Mar
do I know your shape
writing in this, my language:
my not-language:the not-knowing
the looking up: what is the sign, again
dictionary, internet, verify: my memory
my guide
words I have never known
and then the sound:
for this, even Google has no answers.
Because our language is and is not a written language.
Because the computer’s voice marbling shuǐké
in a dipping double fall-to-rise isn’t speaking
our language but its bigger, steadier, colonizer cousin.
our language less shush and more bark
our language breaks more rules
I know shuǐ is really seoi2, know the valley girl lilt
of tone two mid rising in my mouth like I know
I would have written it sui for my mother to read aloud
as I practiced my writing tests
how it sounded in my pencil
swishing water’s shape onto the page
but I have no sound for ké
could be 摔 like a hammer falling
or cyun1 like a village alone
or 街 gaai1 like a street with light shifting through it
Guest: Second Translation
Caroline Mei-Lin Mar
Months later I will ride down the wide boulevards of my city
with two strangers and a driver the age of my father same receding black hair
but lacking the milktall stance and orthodontia smile
of the American-born, thus reminding me more of the generation before.
The strangers don’t speak, staring
at their phones (as is the custom). I stare
at his name, turning its tone in my closed mouth. It could be
Chi4 or even Chi3 but who would name their child 廁
really. I won’t speak until the strangers both leave the car,
mouth careful: my father grew up in Chinatown and how long
have you lived here, Chi1? deciding to go for tone one
like an optimistic song on my tongue and he asks me
do I speak 廣 東 話 and I say 無 咁 多
and he says he thinks it’s better living in the Richmond
than crowded Chinatown and yes the Richmond is a lot like the Sunset
where I grew up which is when it occurs
maybe he can answer so at the next red light I pull up
my ghost-words and say I know 水 but I don’t know
this second one: can you help me and he says oh yes:
his silver edged bridge flashing delight at the shore of his lip:
that’s seoi2 haak3.
Means someone who travels back and forth, like
a merchant or an importer-exporter, says it a few times
for me to practice in my wobbly 克 – 黑 – 嚇 accent
until I get it right: 客.
I say it used to mean the people who carried
your letters home when no one could leave or come here
and he says sure it’s still a lot like that
they still use it for those who go back
and forth between here and there
carrying what anyone needs.
Guest: Third Translation
Caroline Mei-Lin Mar
that the guest is the only objective observer
who is a guest in my mouth
who will visit me when I am gone
(no one, no one)
whose customs can I call my own, can I crawl through
to traverse the other side
I have lost my objectivity, lost my object
of admiration, let me speak to
your manager, the customer is always
paying passage, passenger, a passing attempt
at an old goal, old ghost, older growth
I am lost in the forest for the trees
I am lost in the lake for the water, O,
there it is, then, the water:
I am arriving, I am arrived
Caroline Mei-Lin Mar is the author of Special Education (Texas Review Press, forthcoming October 2020). A high school health educator in San Francisco, she is doing her best to keep her gentrifying hometown queer and creative. Carrie is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, an alumna of VONA, and a member of Rabble Collective. She has been granted residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Ragdale. You can write to Carrie at P.O. Box 460491, San Francisco, CA 94114–she’ll (eventually) write back.