The Vision
In my room, Kuan Yin guards my bed.
Goddess of Unmarried Women.
Goddess of Fertility.
Goddess of Mercy.
She stands on a throne of gold-tipped lotus,
holding a white horsetail duster
and metal rings to encircle
the heads of the disobedient.
Her black hair flows over her white veils,
and she smiles to me as her pink lotus flies
across the sky. Sometimes she carries
an infant in her arms,
but Kuan Yin is not the Virgin Mary.
The child she carries is not her own.
I have prayed to her since I was a child
before I knew what prayer meant,
when daily my mother slapped
the bamboo stick across my arms and legs,
and my prayers became the bridge across the pain.
My grandmother tells me to release my childhood,
remember only that Kuan Yin plucked me off
the wobbly junk of a boat gypsy
and flew me to her,
dark orphan, my skin rashed and peeling.
Today, walking through the streets of Chinatown
I buy images of her.
Sometimes pewter, sometimes bargain jade,
these small comforts
I collect like tokens
to buy my way across.