a marketplace for souls trading in paper money
for an item from their loved ones.
something small
something unnoticed.
bells clinking
the man with wheat skin
cataract eyes with crow’s feet
black trousers torn raw at the hems
trades in his last crumpled joss bill
for one of his daughter’s pens, still warm with
life from her hand. jostled by the milling crowd,
his branch-gnarled fingers quiver. two strings
of fate—
one attached to his wrist,
the other to the pen.
both ordained to part ways.
it falls on the ground. neither find
their way back to each other.
a child worms through the huddle,
half his face ripened pink in delight, the other
half a deformed tragedy from an indiscriminate fire.
blade in his left fist, slices the patched pocket of
an unsuspecting woman mulling over honey melons.
a single coin fills the basin of his hand. disappointed,
he kicks up dust, slouches away, hands in his pockets,
laden with cut holes. not by his own design.
the stall owner’s hawk eyes shoot air-thin needles
down Gao-Jer’s spine. “you’re not supposed to be here”
is a speculation, but when uttered from the lips
of the dead, morphs into a warning for which
there is no refutation. joss paper for a pair
of hemp shoes shuts him up,
asks her if she’d like to buy shoe cleaner solution
for an extra fee. they have that down here?
yeah, made from the drool of hungry ghosts.
proceeds go towards their finances for food,
or if they’re lucky, a pair of hemp shoes. she rejects
the offer. he suggests holding the shoes close to
her chest. two possibilities:
the shoes rip
or she rips,
both torn by desirous ghosts.
twelve great mountains span
the thunder-soot sky, smoldered with whaleback
clouds. a mother’s love is enough to traverse
all mountains, but a daughter’s love is enough
to follow after them. Gao-Jer is one with the
soldiering ghost crowd, edging towards the
first mountain. a little girl beside her asks how
she died. grief, she responds. not the truth but as close
as she’ll get. the wind picks up, and Gao-Jer offers
the girl her jacket. she’s moved to tears. “since i
came here the cold has followed me.” from this,
Gao-Jer knows how she died. mov nplaum wrapped
in banana leaves falls in Gao-Jer’s hands
from the grace of the little girl’s. “the second mountain
is a pit of gluttony.” don’t be eaten and don’t eat
others. the first is a death of the soul. the latter is
a curse. all perpetrators are condemned to being
feasted upon forever on the mountain. Gao-Jer pinches the
hemp shoes to her chest and recites her mother’s name.
second mountain offers no seconds
for those who are hungry. a frothing cauldron boils
above a fire pit. scent of stinging spring onions and
bittersweet oyster sauce hangs
in
the
air,
but the underlying whiff of innocent flesh forms
a resistance in the passing ghosts, all determined to
prove themselves stronger than their hunger.
mov nplaum in her pocket warms her thigh and
speaks to her craving. a mother’s love is enough to
feed her children, but a daughter’s love
feeds the mother. a man who crawls on four limbs
approaches her after he’s done feeding on carrion.
“your mother left this for you—one week ago—knew
you’d probably come. poor her, she must be so hungry.
—i can’t eat them. mortal food poisons me.”
spindle-like fingers caress a cloth-covered package
—her mother’s embroidery. she unravels its content:
succulent, scarlet-shelled rambutans bursting with the
syrup of life. one bite and juices drip down her chin
accompanied by tears of joy or yearning, or missing—
she doesn’t know. the man catches a glimpse of her
mother’s hemp shoes, gnashes at her arm with
razor teeth. she flings him away and escapes.
third, fourth, fifth mountain.
Dab Ntxwj Nyug’s heavenly cattle dot the reed-grass plains,
stare at her with beaded eyes like tapioca pearls.
one of them cries, an animal yet to separate
from the residuals of their human life
Gao-Jer is the same.
sixth mountain is a rolling mass of hairy
caterpillars. a single pierce in the foot is a pierce in the
spirit heart for a string of lifetimes. at the foot,
a woman waits in the skirt of fog. cataract eyes with
crow’s feet, blindly roving to and fro. back hunched,
fingers knotted at the joints as she kneels to feel at
the sparse grass beneath her bare-veined feet. Gao-Jer
places a single, unshelled rambutan in her withered palm—
an offering, almost, but no less than a
hello and
nice to meet you again.
this is one of mother’s many souls, stripped of its eyesight.
i’m sorry i’m late
i’m sorry we have to meet under these circumstances.
her mother writes code in her palm for forgiveness,
traces her features with her fingers like this is her
final act of rebellion, remembering her past before
she severs their connection forever, as she’s supposed to.
the hemp shoes are a memento of Gao-Jer’s journey,
surprisingly intact, and she marvels at what it means
to take something delicate and hold it that gently without
crushing it alive. she becomes a kneeling sentinel, fits
the hemp shoes on her mother’s feet, and wishes them
to magically disappear so she would have no reason
to leave. she yearns for tus qeej to sing her
mother a path back, but if she doesn’t want a way back,
Gao-Jer—with these shoes—will give her a
way
forward.
she doesn’t know this, but Gao-Jer has
stuffed the mov nplaum in her mother’s pocket.
her mother smiles.
body wrapped up in fog, she wafts away,
the edges of her ghostly silhouette tragically soft
like any dandelion waiting to be blown away.
the rambutan is back in Gao-Jer’s hand,
and this time she crushes it.
Phoua Lee is a Hmong American writer and MFA Creative Writing student at California State University, Fresno. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best Small Fictions, and published in Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Fractured Lit, A Velvet Giant, and Poets.org, among others.
