Swelling Tides

By Anita Ngai

I am eating phở alone at a street stall,
sitting on a low plastic stool next to the tall pots of broths and noodles.
 
Good morning, well, we’ve still got some heavy showers,
brought by the low-pressure system swirling around
 
Northwest England, heading down to the London area.
This is the BBC World Service.
 
It is night. I have just arrived in Nanyang, the old
name for Southeast Asia. 
 
“South Seas” gives away the fact that the
name was created by the Chinese.
 
My uncle sails through here extensively.
He is earning a high school diploma from a
 
work-study program, living on cargo liners. (I will discover
the modern term for that job: Logistics Specialist.)
 
We interrupt our regular program to bring you this breaking news.
The chief architect of the Chinese revolution,
 
Mao Tse-tung, has passed away on at ten minutes
past midnight on September 9, 1976 in Peking
 
because of the worsening of his illness,
despite all treatment.
 
The world is in chaos: Vietnam has just
fallen into communist hands, and the US has withdrawn.
 
The west is just coming out of an
oil crisis, a crash in the stock markets.
 
My uncle is so poor, and sailing is the only way
he can be fed and learn something. And,
 
the seas will reciprocate him with
knowledge on shipping containers,
 
and his life of riches in servicing them.
But that is later, after I grow up.
 
He finds calmness in the seas, in his life as a sailor.
He learns how to stay levelheaded
 
through waves, even the big ones. I wonder
if sitting in front of computers trains me the same way.
 
The Communist party had delayed the announcement of Chairman Mao's
death for about 16 hours. The announcement included
 
an appeal to the people: “China must continue to carry out
Chairman Mao's revolutionary line and policies in foreign affairs resolutely.”
 
This concludes the breaking news broadcast. All normal
programming operations may now resume.

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Dozing Off
​

By ​​Anita Ngai

You will hit your head on the window,
making a loud bang that will wake you up
for just half a second. Your hair will make light wipe
marks on the fogged-up glass. Then
another later, your neck will go limp again,
flicking the head to the right,
hitting the window on the same spot,
as you sit in the rear seat
of the black car organized by your adoption agency,
going from the airport
to the center of Seoul, after the
twenty-hour journey from Milwaukee.
 
The fourteen-hour time difference
and the ever-so-slight ache at the
banged spot on your forehead will
play with your mind
and heighten your expectations.
You will have been called in as
the woman who left you in the
baby box at Jusarang Church
twenty-four years ago
has been located
and may be willing to meet you,
after not wanting to hold you when you cried,
feed you when you were hungry,
scold you when you made mistakes. You will decide that
mental preparation is not needed—after
two mistakenly identified candidates—but
inklings of tension will still be noticeable
in your stiff shoulders, burning eyes,
and curled-up toes in your Red Wings.
 
You will drift through the familiar hallway
filled with posters of young Koreans
with beaming faces, holding the arms or
shoulders of older Koreans dressed in hanbok,
with polite smiles and stiff stance. You will finally
wake up fully and notice your watering eyes, as you
open the manila folder to look at the photo of her
and discover your exact resemblance.            

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Anita Ngai is currently a poetry MFA student in Warren Wilson College and is based in Vancouver, BC, where she grew up. Her writing has appeared in Figroot Press, Talking River, Junto Magazine, Temenos, and Lit Crawl, as well as various architecture magazines. She was born in Hong Kong, trained as a structural engineer, and currently works as a business executive in a technology start-up.