23 And Me

I have no desire to trace
my ancestor’s paths from Point A Europe
to Point B New York, innocent as they all appear
in the album’s ruffle-edged photos,
arms folded, cigarette dangling like an extra digit,
hoisting babies too big for the camera,
too small to be forgotten, all in the
grayscale patina we took for
the actual world before us.

I hold enough information in my own cells,
more than some DNA hit list,
can intuit behind-the-scenes scampers, crossovers,
all graciously forgotten once-upon-a-times that
once brought us to this childhood:
pepper steak, egg rolls, fortune cookies
in crumpled to-go bag stained with scrutable dreams,
evidence of an evening spent at the bar next to the restaurant.
Tired of spaghetti, of manhood he had no map for,
my father’s boney molecules were lost in
the duck sauce, the soy of his own creation.

Long Islander by birth, Cheryl A. Rice has called New York’s Hudson Valley home for over forty years. She is founder/host of the now-defunct Sylvia Plath Bake-Off. Publications include Dressing for the Unbearable (Flying Monkey Press), Love’s Compass (Kung Fu Treachery Press), Until The Words Came (Post Traumatic Press), and My Minnesota Boyhood (Post Traumatic Press). Her blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/.