Dongguan

Zipped in the gray

hoodie of late morning

cloud, lavender

bursts of green onion

presage the thrum

of a robin. A maple seed

flips over the sandy

blend of pebbles concretized

into pavement. My sister

Mariah’s  breakfast

coincides with lunch, how

the most miserable

summer of my life I nocturned

on bootleg DVD’s

and instant noodles,

knocked off novels (Catch-22,

The Razor’s Edge, Catcher

in the Rye and onto Seymour

from there), and lit cigarettes

I hadn’t figured out

how to inhale. Furthermore

bought my first box

of condoms shyly averting

the supermarket checkout

girl’s gaze in the factory town

of Dongguan where

my missionary parents’

marriage ruptured

in the first argument I ever                 

heard them have. Mom

screaming behind the bedroom

door fainted that summer

while hanging clothes

out on the balcony

of the villa

for the mistresses

of Hong Kong businessmen.

In a thicket of desperation

about the thinning

spot on the crown of my head,

I shampooed from a quack

green Chairman Mao

lookalike labeled bottle.

Now my robin whisks

to the timber beam

of the swing set, the dark

eaves of the pagoda. 

I ran all through my twenties.

In Dongguan, I hung the red

t-shirt I pranced in

over the second-story rail.

Mariah remembers this,

more than anything, stiffening

with sweat. I still can’t

believe the movies

we watched then: The Exorcist,

28 Days Later, Zodiac: She,

only 12, now 26

night owls her way

through grad school.

I rise early with the kids

but see myself as I was then

ankles rolling

over the mashed sidewalks

of machine shops.

Along the canal, I caught

a thousand dark stares

with my milk white thighs. 

Cameron Morse was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in 2014. With a 14.6 month life expectancy, he entered the Creative Writing Program at the University of Missouri—Kansas City and, in 2018, graduated with an M.F.A. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first poetry collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press's 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He lives with his wife Lili and two children in Blue Springs, Missouri, where he serves as poetry editor for Harbor Review. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.