Danger and Beauty

by Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata

• ISBN13: 9780872863873
• ISBN10: 0872863875
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: City Lights Books

Summary

Hagedorn muses about love and sex, and probes with wry humor and sharp social satire the heart-and hearbreaks-of the immigrant experience. "Jessica Hagedorn is one of the best of a new generation of writers who are making American language new and who in the process are creating a new American Literature."-Russell Banks "[Hagedorn] sees her native land from both near and far, with ambivalent love, the only kind of love worth writing about."-John Updike Jessica Hagedorn is a performance artist, poet, playwright, and formerly a commentator on NPR. Her novel, Dogeaters, won an American Book Award. Other books include the groundbreaking Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and The Gangster of Love.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
The Death of Anna May Wong: Poems 1968-1972	p. 3
Dangerous Music: 1975	p. 19
Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions: 1981	p. 75
New York Peep Show: 1982-2001	p. 165
Table of Contents provided by Syndetics. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY PART ONE: MANILA TO SAN FRANCISCO The pistol, yes. Sheets of paper horizontally folded. Men carry clocks Into the room. The pistol. A letter to my father Forgotten. Voices from open windows Do not break rules. Two lips kiss. The sun rises On the other side of the continent. Every morning ... A plate and spoon beside the pistol. Raised to the temple, Its body is not quite round, Sleek gray stone in my hand ... a cup Of milk spills. The pistol is pressed to the skull- Open mouth Like butterfly wings Murmuring supplications Instead Another kiss Voices repeat the rules From open windows. Each clock Strikes a different time In Spain A gypsy servant named Candles of the Sun Dances On your birthday And you will never forget Her smell And her dwarf-lover Who followed you Into the mountains ... asking you To wear his shoes That Gabriel He's so polite My dead brother who is buried. (My mother's Hemorrhage is a lump in the grave) That Gabriel My brother; my uncle; My father; The dwarf. Who carries a pistol And wears rubber shoes Your ankles Are too frail For these mountains But you persist In climbing them anyway So you can say: "I've seen the ruins Of Guernica; in my hometown There's even a nightclub named Guernica." Candles of the Sun My sandalwood gypsy ... The pistol, the pistol, Yes! I live on the street Of police ghosts and pimps ... The rebels who avenge them Ask for money And threaten to blow My brains out. The pistol, the black revolver The nightmare The swollen eye The gun! I will gun you down, I will shoot you I will kill you. I will molest you I will assault you I will kiss your cunt I will blow you up. I will shoot! I will Gun you down! But not ... but not ... forever ... Not yet. In Hong Kong A girl Her coarse hair flies In the afternoon wind She is a genuine colony concubine Who drinks tea At exactly four-fifteen at the Peninsula hotel (Oh yes, ba, in a silk shantung-slit yellow-legged fantasy) An all Chinese orchestra Plays Mantovani and Monteverdi and George Gershwin There is a border One cannot cross Although the guards are not visible. George Gershwin Mantovani and Monteverdi Have not ceased Being British In Kowloon But across territory lines The guards remain Invisible. Two magazines A cigarette-filled abalone shell. The invisible weapon. Down the street Sleeps the wife Of a revolutionary. Avenge them all, On behalf of Chrysler-Pontiacs! There are twenty-four tactics According to the pamphlet. The inevitable result Is the inevitable electronic solution. Oh, lies! Lies! Lies! I am neither or either. Perpetrator, traitor, user of soap! Lies! So thin So metallic, so invisible! Police shadows On ghost motorcycles Patrol the streets. It is too late- I am up before dusk Watching the sunset ... It is too soon- In Asia One dies slowly Fanning off the heat With a stiff palm leaf. I love you, Garcia Villa You are not the only one Who is going to die In the city Wearing velvet slippers And a patched red shirt You are a man In between airplanes Semi-retired, a not so notorious Professor of the word A torpid university dream. In Asia One dies too slowly Without weapons ... In America The smell of death pervades Among its women In department stores ... They linger, tubercular sparrows With bony throats and sooty lashes Peering elegantly From behind diamond-clear counters. My country of old women! My sweet nicotine-tooth Prostitute ... Give me a receipt For your time. 1968 AUTOBIOGRAPHY PART TWO: ROCK AND ROLL for Victor Hernandez Cruz We boogied when I was eight I had just learned to dance Carl Perkins sang "Matchbox" And I hated him But anything was better Than Bill Haley or Frankie Laine Until Elvis and Little Richard; I wanted them so much I would've known how to fuck them then In joyous appreciation When I was ten It was Etta James I didn't know what she looked like, If she was male or female I worried about my odor When I did the slowdrag And the guys had their Sideways erections To Etta James And then Chub Checker and Joey Dee Red shirts stained with sweat Tight white toreador pants American tennis shoes- In 1960 Elvis was a drag Harry Belafonte gave a concert At the Coliseum The older chicks dug him. (He wore a beautiful tangerine Shirt open at the throat) Fabian was doing his tiger We posed for a photograph Together Cost me three pesos And an autographed lace Handkerchief 1962 and Philadelphia Italians Fabian Frankie Avalon Dion and the Belmonts With poufed blond hair I was in Hong Kong Buying Bob Vee records And then Tokyo Buying Paul Anka "Live at the Copacabana" San Francisco Was a gray dream A gray meat market harbor I thought it was Chicago My mother cried A lot then Her face was gray The Four Seasons were very big For some reason I hated them. My first weeks in San Francisco and I was Surrounded faggots; Lovely gilt-frame Antique queers: My uncles my mothers My dubious friends- Bill Haley was dead Bob Vee was dead Little Richard in some church Yes, yes Little Anthony Was very big then ... I will never forget him. March 1969 THE DEATH OF ANNA MAY WONG My mother is very beautiful And not yet old. A Twin, Color of two continents: I stroll through Irish tenderloin Nightmare doors-drunks spill out Saloon alleys falling asleep At my feet ... My mother wears a beaded Mandarin coat: In the dryness Of San Diego's mediterranean parody I see your ghost, Belen As you clean up After your sweet señora's mierda Jazz, Don't do me like that. Mambo, Don't do me like that. Samba, calypso, funk and Boogie Don't cut me up like that Move my gut so high up Inside my throat I can only strangle you To keep from crying ... My mother serves crepes suzettes With a smile And a puma Slithers down 19th street and Valencia Gabriel o.d.'s on reds As we dance together Dorothy Lamour undrapes Her sarong And Bing Cros ignores The mierda. My mother's lavender lips Stretch in a slow smile. And beneath The night's cartoon sky Cold with rain Alice Coltrane Kills the pain And I know I can't go home again. 1971 FILIPINO BOOGIE Under a ceiling-high Christmas tree I pose in my Japanese kimono My mother hands me a Dale Evans cowgirl skirt and ba cowgirl boots Mommy and daddy split No one else is home I take some rusty scissors and cut the skirt up in little pieces (don't give me no bullshit fringe, Mama) Mommy and daddy split No one else is home I take my ba cowgirl boots and flush them down the toilet (don't hand me no bullshit fringe, Papa) I seen the Indian Fighter Too many times dug on Sitting Bull before Donald Duck In my infant dream These warriors weaved a magic spell more blessed than Tinker Bell (Kirk Douglas rubs his chin and slays Minnehaha the campfire) Mommy and daddy split There ain't no one else home I climb a mango tree and wait for Mohawk drums (Mama-World War II is over ... why you cryin'?) Is this San Francisco? Is this San Francisco? Is this Amerika? buy me Nestles Crunch buy me Pepsi in a can Ladies' Home Journal and Bonanza I seen Little Joe in Tokyo I seen Little Joe in Manila I seen Laramie in Hong Kong I seen Yul Brynner in San Diego and the bloated ghost of Desi Arnaz dancing in Tijuana Rip-off synthetic ivory to send the natives back home and North Beach boredom escapes the barber shops on Kearny street where they spit out red tobacco patiently waiting in 1930s suits and in another dream I climb a mango tree and Saturday afternoon Jack Palance bazookas the krauts and the YELLOW PERIL bombs Pearl Harbor 1971

Excerpted from DANGER AND BEAUTY by JESSICA HAGEDORN Copyright © 2002 by Jessica Hagedorn
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.