So my mom wanted to name me Brian, and my dad,
who had seen Bruce Lee, who in the '70s, when I was born,
was often on TV with his son, Brandon--
and so my dad said, well, what about Brandon?
And my Chinese grandmother, my dad's mom,
gave me a Chinese name.
Transliterated Brandon into a name that was "Beh-ndon."
And as the custom is, she put an -ah at the end
when she talked to me or called to me.
So it sounded like "Beh-ndon ah."
And I wanted to do a poem with that -ah sound,
and so this is that poem.
It's called "Inventory."
"The -ah was more song, and she sang beyond the name.
If the name were river, the -ah flooded its banks.
Nonetheless, in its song, the -ah signed the air.
Made the air mean.
The -ah hitched and hinged its intimacy.
Jaw dropped, it crooned its diminutive.
Sang of class, filling a back kitchen
at lunch, where a wok clangs, and a knife trims the gristle.
In the stockroom with her, it kept accounts.
Was a ledger-- an idea of order among Schlitz and Old Milwaukee.
From tones in the pharynx, from lungs that hung like two
clipboards came the -ah's inventory.
She tied the -ah to my name like that old trick,
tongue tying cherry stem.
Quipu or rosary, in the knot was knowing.
She threaded the eye to sow a threnody.
Liturgy, the way she sang the vow amid the till bell--
a field song overproduce.
A nah, a nope, a uh-oh.
It was abracadabra.
An endnote.
A colophon bearing the binder's mark.
It lingered incarnate in the cold walk
in or ghosted the stocked aisles,
where I stood over cans of Ajax and Green Giant.
The -ah was wavelength.
A frequency shape like a mountain range.
It was the gesture's aura, and like a varnish,
it lustered my name and diminished
like a mark in the margin.
It was whistle house, a star's spur,
and it could scold from the meat counter, where
she priced the chuck with a grease pen tied to the scale.
In her long breath, the -ah was money to burn.
Incense in a Folgers can.
In the ear, as if in a mirror, I found myself listening.
And like all language, it was a grave's treats.
Singing of separateness and tracing something complete.
Though not on a map, its lilt echoed the geographies,
and she hummed it simply over a thin broth simmered day long
and suckled on a short rib."