Chinese Noir

Among cafe receipts and envelopes
was my father's gun and box of bullets.

He'd tell me never to touch the top shelf
supply cabinet in that blind-shut backroom
where he sat most of the night---and slept
with his wallet under the mattress.

I'd see him through the door crack
fingering his abacus while whispering
Chinese into the phone. .

What was he saying, who was Ray---
and Beauty Bright, Angel's Flight, win,
place, show?

I was seven, then, and didn't know
about Hollywood Park or Del Mar.

But tonight on my balcony overlooking
Sierra Madre canyon, eyes fixated
by the glowing track lights of Santa Anita,
I remember that day we cleaned out
the house for the realtor.

I remember---bagging it, bullets and all,
and my brother saying, "He once killed
a man with that"---

And those nights my mother called
the restaurant, and the waiter said, "Boss
he not in, at Little Tokyo Hotel."

Another woman, a poker game, or a shady
deal with Ray? Mother never asked.

This Humphrey Bogart look-a-like
with a five o' clock shadow and saliva wet
cigarette dragging his lower lip,
was such a fixture at big family dinners,

we kids just called him Uncle Ray---
until one night I heard father arguing
with another man in the backyard.

I remember gyrating shadows on the lawn
cast by the moon and how they've tailed me
down the dark alleys as I write my way
out of the past.

Traces of gunpowder lace my fmgers
from that day I wiped off the top shelf
father said never to touch.

4/10/11