The cook from Hainan
The cook from Hainan and his 8 younger brothers.
All darkened by the sun.
Green seas are warm like insides.
Exhaustion. 14 years old –he is BigBrotherBig.
He captains the bloodline. Provides for his mother, provides for his father (who ran out of
trickster’s luck)
and goes out to sea
When he returned, they ate the bounty
Buys his new boat, blood helps the blood #5 drops out of school
#2 joins later. Hard job but pays well.
Ranging quite far: Vietnam to Indonesia,
Burma. In fact, they would poach in Vietnam and Indonesia.
Eel-like through the waters lancing themselves eels,
stingrays and shark.
Grabbing up shellfish.
Gouging out the giant clam’s
precious insides.
Coastally notorious, especially #1 who was well-received in many villages
Not technically pirates. But the fish made good money
and they cheated with bombs (it’s how they all did it)
They brought back flesh so luxuriously wet
They brought back money
They brought back bullet holes
robbery on the south dragon’s trove
(the one associated with cinnabar)
And exotic animals. Katong house had a crocodile, a coconut crab and an eagle
that they would eventually sell. Keeping
the eagle the longest.
Every two days and every week Tai Ma stood on the dockside for her sons to come home
#5 was ritualistic,
they were all ritualistic
When #5 came ashore to Katong House, he commenced the same ritual:
He would first put on his favorite lover’s dress. Swagger out to the road.
He would act “funny funny” to make his siblings laugh.
Then on the next day, he would bring out 3 wooden tubs of ice --each wide as a coffee-shop
table, each consisting a purchase of 100 beers. All would come to Katong House,
blood or not
and drink under the mango tree as he cooked up the catch. The smell unexorcizable
#8 and #7 would catch eels to feed their eagle.
They put cigarettes in the sand
and sometimes in the censer
ghosts are riding the hemoglobin
The cup refills, it was nowhere near emptiness.
unrelated fisherman
a shark opened him up