Poetry
by Li Min Hua
Haircut
Yes, clip a little off the sides, just so
And did you mean to leave the door ajar,
Though I suppose no student's wildest guess
could see this gesture one of love? And why
Are you so stern, intense, as not to smile
At this perfunctory chore?
The mirror? Yes,
I grow bald, true. Those spots? From chicken pox,
Because I scratched, as you your warts have cut
And left a sore.
Suppose the patter down
The hall comes here: the drama would be rich,
I think, to see me old again, assume
My professorial pose and grandly sit
White robed with academic levity
In student's barber sheet. I'm known to jest;
It's here that lies our calm security.
They've gone downstairs this time. Oh, just
as well;
I get enough of acting through the week.
Surely the cow-lick must be cut: you're wrong
To think that therein lies my character.
I'm not all jest, not all tears either. But
You know: for jest, my picture on your wall,
Hanging among the many others there,
My stance a comical, frank mockery
Of all that coaching is. And yet for tears,
Your poem newly written, seeing me
The oversized mosquito that you caught
But did not squash in our canoe.
At any rate, I'm tears and jests, and not
Just one, if either.
Still? I squirm too much?
I know. Forgive. Your skills are more advanced
Than I had hoped. I thought to get a nick,
A slight one just behind the ear, a badge
Of boyhood, a silly souvenir from you
To me, a sometime Humbert Humbert lost
In love here in a nice boys' boarding school.
This Boy
This boy,
hair on his midriff gleaming:
whiff of Eden's applebreath.
Li Min Hua 68, is an emeritus professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Li has published 267 poems and numerous essays. Li taught in China from 1983-1987.
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