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Love Story

Marilyn Chin

The aerogram says come the photos show bliss

Another felicitous union a fresh beginning

He’s so handsome fat she’s so new world slim

The envelopes are red the writing vermeil

He’ll get a good job an iron rice bowl won’t break

She’s caught a princely man a silent one like her father

Sister dyes pink eggs Auntie boils cider knuckles

The Great Patriarch is happy a bouncy grandson

A bundle of joy from a test tube in heaven

Thank you for your blessings for your lucky lycee

A young nurse cares for her now in a small hospice near the sea

He’s alone on Silicon Hill that’s where he’s happy

Emails turn silent Instagrams remiss

Thank you for the white gardenias they’ll sweeten her soul

The joss paper boats will net fish for her in the next world

Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon. The author of five poetry collections, she currently serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Themes

About this Poem

“This immigrant couple’s entire history is told in just five triplet stanzas. I didn’t use punctuation, just spaces so that the reader could pause between breaths, to briefly take in the different stages of their life together. This might be a typical American story: an immigrant couple gets married, the husband gets a good job (an iron rice bowl), they conceive children, grow old, die peacefully in their new nation. However, their story does not quite end in harmonious resolution. A love story is a never-ending drama.”

—Marilyn Chin

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More by this poet

Autumn Leaves

The dead piled up, thick, fragrant, on the fire escape.
My mother ordered me again, and again, to sweep it clean.
All that blooms must fall. I learned this not from the Dao,
   but from high school biology.

Oh, the contradictions of having a broom and not a dustpan!
I swept the leaves down, down through the iron grille
and let the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio.

And it was Achilles Wong who completed the task.
   We called her:
The one-who-cleared-away-another-family’s-autumn.
She blossomed, tall, benevolent, notwithstanding.

Marilyn Chin

1994

How I Got that Name

an essay on assimilation

Marilyn Chin

1994

Turtle Soup

You go home one evening tired from work,
and your mother boils you turtle soup.
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth
(who knows what else is in that cauldron.)

Marilyn Chin

1994

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Love Story

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