Photo by Tom Graves of poet Priscilla Lee
Effective September 2003, the San Francisco Public Library Web site, www.sfpl.org, will feature selected poems from the
City Reflections: War and Peace on Our Streets project. Priscilla Lee is one of the fine poets whose work will be featured.
Priscilla Lee's book of poetry, Wishbone, was published by the Roundhouse Press as part of the California Poetry Series. She works at
an Asian-American senior activities center in San Francisco and lives with her husband and two cats.
She is currently working on her second book of poetry, Chu's House of Lovely Animals.
Books she thinks folks should read:
- Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness by Carolyn Forche (Editor)
- Journals by Kurt Cobain
- The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection by Michael Ruhlman
- Proverbs of Ashes : Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search of What Saves Us, by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker
- The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (Popular Culture and Philosophy,v. 3) by William Irwin (Editor)
Moon Cake
by Priscilla Lee
Celebrating the harvest moon,
Grandma opened the Doungh Ah
bakery boxes. Inside, palm-sized
cakes, each in its own waxy bag,
duck egg yolk in the center
with its thin sheen of oil, glistening
like a moon. I saved the yolk
for my last bite, letting the saltiness
surprise my mouth. The year I started
growing breasts, Sherilyn and I asked
our mother for the recipe. “Too much trouble,”
she answered. We’d made brownies
for the school bake sale so moon cakes
shouldn’t be difficult--red bean paste,
some pastry crust, pickled egg yolk.
I bought a wooden mold
from Ginn Wall Hardware and read
“Wei-Chuan’s Chinese Cooking
for Beginners.” We stuffed the cakes
into the round wells, flattening
the tops with our knuckles.
We whacked the mold against
the back of a chair, hoping the wood
wouldn’t crack and catching the cakes
when they flew out. In the oven,
all twenty exploded, yolks splitting
their delicate skin. That year, I thought
I might be dying from cancer, one nipple,
a hard lump, growing out from my chest.
When I screamed for my mother
in the bathroom, she told me, “Shut up!
You’ll know later. From now on,
Don’t let anyone touch you.”
Does that mean I can’t play kickball?
I didn’t know about training bras
or anything until I read “Are you there God?
It’s me, Margaret.” Now, I want to create
moon cakes for the next generation.
This time, with fillings of Haagen-Dazs
ice cream or chocolate chip cheesecake.
I’ve ordered fuchsia plastic molds
from Malaysia, but I haven’t figured out
the egg yolk. What can you substitute
for a bright round moon?
