Autumn, Shanghai

  plane leaves turn, begin 
  to fall—a migrant sweeps
  with a sorghum broom 
  
  others plant Golden Week
  flowers—purple yellow
  red flags in the breeze
  
  over smooth stone paving
  a calligrapher paints, dips 
  his long brush 
  
  with water
  
  zuo zuo zuo yihuir—
  sit sit sit awhile
  
  a white butterfly, a black butterfly
  
  erhu, wooden flute 
  in the pavilion a man, a woman 
  
  sing Heaven’s Road
  
  camphor trees now bereft 
  of cicadas—I hear 
  
  fathers plant a tree 
  at the birth of each daughter
  
  watch them grow, fashion 
  a camphorwood chest
  
  I have no daughter
  
  along the wide path—mothers 
  fathers grandmothers chatter 
  
  over advertisements 
  for marriage clipped 
  to open umbrellas
  
  male born 1989 Shanghai residency
  something I cannot read
  
  ¥4,000/month 
  moral character something I have 
  to look up in the dictionary
  
  female born 1983 
  US post-graduate studies? 
  own apartment something
  
  seeking moral character
  something something
  
  a man appears, speaks 
  in dialect something something
  
  but I am only reading—please 
  I am trying so hard to read 
  
  something something something he says
  moral character something
  
  Does he think I am here for my son?
  
  Ni duo da? he asks—How old are you? 
  You laogong ma?—Have you a husband?  
  
  (Oh) 
  
  You, I say—I have
  
  Sorry sorry sorry his first words in English
  
  someone is taking a photograph
  someone is having a photograph taken
  
  the calligrapher is still 
  painting 
  
  something evaporates 
  
  like morning