My grandfather shakes the doors
after the merchants have closed
for the night. It’s Chinatown,
despite the varying shades of brown
in the dark, the difference between
a clucking tongue and the swivel of guns.
My grandmother walks with him, the clack
of her heels echoing through greasy alleys,
across railroad tracks. He cannot guard
his streets against unexploded bombs,
his family against stories people tell under
the sway of war. My grandfather shakes
every door so his wife will know
they are safe.
After the war, my grandfather, unable
to cultivate his own land, searches for work
once other people’s gardens have succumbed
to Winter. His smile, a two-dollar-an-hour mark
betrays deep snarls in his back, bruises
on his knees. At camp, he lived with sinewy
winds on the Idaho plain, a fierce worry
clenched in his teeth, chattering in his bones.
My father is a boy who has not yet learned
this kind of fury. My grandmother cradles
his head, traces her pinky around his earlobe.
My grandfather listens to the news,
slips off to sleep next to the radiator.
The chicken feels no sting after
the slaughter—my grandfather’s hands
twist the bird from ankles to neck.
During the war, he kept peace at camp.
kept his own barracks safe from the wolves.
Now that the coops are emptied,
he plucks the animals clean of feathers,
scoops them out head to tail.
He knows there is no such thing
as peace, no such thing as home
for a man without safety, for a man
When my grandfather falls asleep
on the sofa each evening, his arms
rest heavy across his chest like
a supermarket bird, his giant hands
tucked away for protection.
My father brews a pot of tea,
tells me to turn down the television
as my grandfather dreams of new
orchards, of peaches tumbling ripe
from branches to alight unbruised
in baskets by the back door.
My grandmother sits, her tiny hands
in her lap. Have the wings always been
the most useless parts of a chicken?
My grandmother peers through the blinds,
strange eyes straining to see people
on unfamiliar city streets. My grandfather rests
light in that cardboard box full of ashes
in her living room next to an orange
and a candle stub. When her front door
rattles after sunset, she gazes at a photograph
of her husband, handsome in his dark suit.
She turns on the radio as he gazes back.