Wood, by Jessica Li

     

    “Lian Sheng Lu’s work captures the nature of the written word.” — Shandong Daily News (trans. Chinese to English)

     

    Here is what I remember: the soft curves

    of a branch, fitted and formatted into a phrase—

    “friend,” 朋友. His weathered hand holding

    his chin gingerly, head tilted in rumination.

     

    My grandfather searched the backyard for twigs

    all afternoon, pieced them together like a god

    crafting his servants, words of a poem we’d forgotten

    derived from tree roots. A sprig with a knot on its side,

     

    limbs with markings scorched into membranes.

    He made calligraphy wooden—physical, three-

    dimensional, harder than meaning itself. Life breathing

    through the pores of chipping lumber: a vessel

     

    of wisdom, burning fires in the lines of his palm. He liked

    to think he was smart. Documentaries were birthed,

    the new art form was found—writing in wood. The thicket

    of creativity found rolling on the ground, crunched

     

    underneath a shoe. Aphorisms we didn’t understand

    glued to a book, nestled together. We tried

    to understand the way his mouth opened

    to spit on the ground, the shuffle of his slippers

     

    when the water started boiling. His hair, the color

    of ivory, the complaints of the new generation

    running down the sink. The same neuroticism he gave

    my mother carved into something permanent.

     

    He once said there’s meaning in everything but everything

    is not a location, latitude longitude, city comma state.

    If a tree becomes a word glued in a book

    collecting dust did it ever really say anything,

     

    or does it lay still, soft in the closing light.