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saviors of families, villages, populations.
    Woman’s adventure, woman’s mission.
    The lone male looking at them was no bother.
    But they hated
me
, a woman, seeing them.
    They looked back at me, shot me with hate.
    Turned to follow me with their eyes, hate
    firing from their eyes. They hated me.
    Hate-stares followed me though I walked
    with the attitude that I was at home among my own
    Asian sisters. In words, they’d be calling me
    names. “You fucking bitch empress. You
    make me clean your toilet. You make me sleep
    in the toilet.” Though catching stinkeye,
    a curling lip, a dissing shrug of shoulders,
    I willed a kind and pleasant mien.
    May you be happy, you be safe.
    May you make much, much money.
    May your children and family be happy and safe,
    and you return home to them soon.
    I must remind them of Madam, their Chinese employer.
    But I don’t look like a Chinese matron.
    I don’t dye my hair black. I’m not
    wearing my gold and jade. They don’t know
    I bought these clothes at the Goodwill.
    I’m wearing shoes donated after the Big Fire.
    They don’t know, most of my nieces and nephews
    are Filipino, and 9 great-nieces
    and great-nephews, Filipino Chinese
    Americans. They don’t know me, I am like them,
    my marriage like theirs. Wife works for money;
    husband, employed or unemployed, has fun.
    Son, too, has fun. Men know how
    to play. Music. Sports. Theater. These women
    don’t know, I work 2 jobs.
    I moonlight, do the work-for-money
    and
the writing. I wish I
    had thought to be a stay-at-home mom.
    (How interesting: The girl makes wishes for
    the future. The eldress, for the past.)
    I, too, send money to villages, the promise
    made to family when leaving them. My BaBa,
    who arrived in New York City when Lindberg
    landed in Paris, vowed: I will not
    forget you. I will always send money
    home. The Pilipina maids see
    me a lazy dowager, and hate me.
    Crone. Witch. Aswang. Old woman
    going about with long hair down
    like a young woman’s, but white. Normal
    in Berkeley, beautiful in Berkeley. And in the Philippines
    I’m already in costume for Aswang Festival,
    day before Hallowe’en, days after
    my birthday. Come on, fête me and my season.
    On the grass in a city park, our male traveller
    feeling his lone hobo self, laid
    his body down with backpack for pillow.
    In San Francisco, it was 2 o’clock the night
    before. Going west from California’s
    shores, jumping forward in time, he’d arrived
    at the house of maternity, the land of migrations.
    Sleeping in public, jet-lagged, soul
    not caught up with body, body
    loose from soul, body trusted itself to
    the grass, the ground, the earth, the good earth,
    and rested in that state where dream is wake,
    wake is dream. Conscious you are conscious.
    Climb—fly—high and higher, and know:
    Now / Always, all connects to all.
    All that is is good. His ancestresses—
    PoPo Grandma and Ma,
    so long in America—are here, the Center.
    Expired, Chinese people leave go of
    cloudsouls that fly to this place.
    Breathe, and be breathed. The air smells
    of farawayness. Seas. Trash. Old
    fish. The Chinese enjoy this smell,
    fragrant, the
hong
in Hong Kong, Fragrant Harbor.
    Yes, something large, dark, quiet,
    receptive—Yin—is breathing, breathing me
    as I am breathing her. My individual
    mind, body, cloudsoul melds
    with the Yin. Mother. I’m home. But
    stir, and the Land of Women goes. Wittman
    arose to bass drums of engines—multiple
    pulses and earth-deep throbs. Forces
    of rushing people. Monday morning go-
    to-work people. The City. (The late riser
    has missed the tai chi, the kung fu,
    the chi kung. While he was sleeping, the artists
    of the chi, mostly women, Chinese
    women, were moving, dancing the air / the wind /
    energy / life, and getting the world turning.
    They’d segued from pose to pose—spread
    white-crane wings, repulse monkey,
    grasp bird by tail, high pat
    on horse, stand like rooster on one leg,
    snake-creep down, return to