Priscilla Lee: California Poets Part 11, Four Poems

Priscilla Lee

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Priscilla Lee

Four Poems

My Grandmother Dying, February 5, 2014

In comfort care, her sunken eyes closed,

she spoke to no one. We stood or sat

on hard hallway chairs, taking shifts

around her bed, calling softly,

“Mother,” “Grandma.” The older women,

in Chinese, whispered, “We’re fine,

don’t worry about us anymore.”

We moved her cold, stiff limbs,

two at a time, rubbing gently,

underneath the blanket,

hoping to bring some warmth back.

From time to time, someone said,

“She’s breathing deeper, her mouth moved.”

My mother, who I thought disliked her,

wailed, “We’re all alright, you can sleep now,”

her voice rising so loud,

it must have woken the napping residents.

Still, no one mentioned the naked woman

in the next room, shredding toilet paper

into a mountain, sobbing with her door wide open.

We shook my grandmother a little harder

as the day wore on, her purplish eyelids

fluttering. “She knows we’re here,”

we said, convincing ourselves

her recognition was real.

When my husband had enough,

he asked, “Are you waiting for something

so you can go home?”

But we weren’t ready. Not yet.

As her breathing became steady

in the belly and upper chest, the attendants

stopped hugging us. We left in carpools,

driving through the rain to a restaurant,

talking of the funeral banquet—

an old Chinese custom to honor the dead.

Mid-meal, my uncle’s phone rang;

we jumped up, ready to run,

only to find it was my cousin

booking his flight to see Grandma.

After dinner, most went home,

but one cousin stayed behind.

She called when Grandma’s breaths

became more rapid. It was dark, the rain

pounding hard, unsafe to drive,

but I returned, found my aunt

still whispering to her, “We’re fine,

don’t worry about us anymore.

You can sleep peacefully now.”

We went home to sleep. The next morning,

my father called. “Your grandmother passed

at 4:58 a.m., quietly, in her sleep.

No one was with her.”

But I think she knew

we had come to say goodbye.

Eleven Chinese Cousins

I look at the portrait taken of my sisters and cousins.

We "kids" wanted a portrait of ourselves,

without the "grown-ups." The eleven of us—

six girls and five boys—are smiling,

all our teeth showing,

a complete portrait of all the cousins.

We are in varying shades of blue and purple,

except the youngest two in bright reds.

Every guy in a tie except Brenton and Stuart,

me with my long Chinese afro,

the same flat nose on all of us.

I was 27 years old, Stephanie, the youngest, was 8.

Growing up, as long as I can remember,

every Saturday my cousins came over

to see our grandparents, who lived with us

in a small 3-bedroom house in the Sunset.

My uncles, aunts, and cousins arrived after lunch,

and "us kids" stayed in the house the entire day.

I don’t recall what we did anymore—

played Monopoly until my sister Sherilyn

won everything, money and property,

and Brenton cried that someone cheated, or

watched Christopher Lee on Creature Feature

with pillows over our eyes, or The Shell Game,

a Chinese soap opera with dialogue in Cantonese

we couldn’t understand except for one phrase,

“I am the King of Kings,” which we said

over and over again, giggling.

Brenton said when he grew up, he would go

to Reno and win a million dollars to share.

Uncle Lealand, Auntie Claire, and my mother

cooked dinner—chopping duck and chicken,

banging pots and pans, threatening bok choy

around the searing wok until it was time to eat.

We celebrated every child’s birthday

with coffee crunch cake from Eastern Bakery

in Chinatown—even Mother’s Day, Father’s Day,

Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Christmas Eve,

we went up to Uncle Gary and Auntie Priscilla’s,

ten blocks away, with our sleeping bags

and tubes of toothpaste, stayed overnight,

and opened presents in the morning

as soon as we woke up.

Uncle Lealand tossed together BBQ pork chow mein

or SPAM fried rice for lunch.

Dinner was over at our house again.

One night, we ventured out to the beach,

and Jason got pulled out into the ocean.

It was a miracle he washed up on shore alive.

The cousins spent the evening at the laundromat

drying Jason’s clothes, then came back

to the screaming adults.

We were thankful we came home to all the yelling.

It could have ended worse.

Then, my grandfather died when I was 28,

and life became quiet.

Auntie Claire comforted my grandmother.

Dad and my uncles brooded more,

talked about their father, what they remembered.

When my grandmother came down

with Alzheimer’s and left the faucet running

and pots on the burner until the water evaporated,

my mother sent her to a convalescent home

The siblings blamed my mother for sending

their mother away instead of hiring an attendant.

My father took my mother’s side. My grandmother deteriorated.

No one came over to my parents’ house much.

We rarely saw each other. I don’t know why

we didn’t make an effort to see each other,

except that the cousins might have grown up

and gotten on with our lives

instead of remaining children.

When my grandmother died, I was almost happy

in a bittersweet way that the cousins were together

again for our many days of Chinese mourning.

I remember the day we had the portrait taken.

Brenton showed up to pick up

Stephanie and Stuart on time—

and he was usually late to everything back then.

Uncle Lealand was perplexed

that Alton bought a tie for no reason

Ellison and I came to the photo studio

looking like we got dressed in the dark

in our street clothes, but made miraculous

transformations: me in a navy dress

with yellow roses, Ellison in an Oxford blue vest

and pressed slacks. Julie, Sherilyn, and Kim made faces

at Stephanie to make her smile.

Our portrait was so unusual—since no one had taken

a kids-only portrait before—that it hung

on the wall of Patrick Wong Photography for many years,

until Patrick passed away.

After the photo session, the cousins

went to Maria’s Mexican Restaurant.

Jason ordered two different platters,

and Alton said, “He hasn’t gotten

the concept of combination yet.”

Stuart had so much hot sauce

that the waitresses joked

he must be half Mexican.

The waitresses thought Ellison looked sharp

in his shiny blue vest—and he did.

Months later, we picked up our portrait from Patrick.

Our parents were surprised.

My grandfather, who was blind

and couldn’t see the portrait,

held it and smiled.

Foil-Wrapped Chicken

For Claire Chin, Apr 6, 1945 – Oct 30, 2016

Dear Auntie Claire,

You were always laughing, sounds like little bells,

when I was little and hiding in the kitchen cabinets,

watching you steam fish or pork hash for dinner.

You’d call, "Quan Yi, mow moi, you cat girl,

where are you hiding?" And I’d spring out

to dance around you, my beautiful young aunt,

in your pastel dress and blue sweater.

You filled the kitchen at 1522 Mason Street

with a humming comfort, a rhythm of warmth

that kept me close to you in the late '60s.

I look through old photographs, Grandma’s albums—

you smiling, your slight overbite showing,

your hair swept back, holding Uncle Tom’s arm

in front of his white Malibu

outside the San Francisco Zoo. The sky above you two

scattering a bright blue light, the day growing

warmer in the late morning glow,

the city almost ready for noon’s golden haze.

Years later, when you were married, our whole family

would meet every Saturday at my parents’ house

to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We kids would stay indoors

all day, amid the clacking of mahjong tiles

and you saying "Aya!" as we watched MTV videos,

as you raised your eyebrows at the latest

from The Cure, ghostly pale, with black lipstick smudged,

prancing around taxidermy cats—

you’d shake your head, pretending to be shocked.

You'd say, "You troublemakers" with a twinkle.

The Lee family was loud.

We sounded like we were yelling at each other

when we're only talking. You were the loudest.

You knew how to enjoy life with your brothers,

sister-in-laws, nieces, and nephews. You adored us.

Uncle Lealand, you, and my mother always

cooked dinner, heating the wok

until smoking hot, creating wok hay

to toss the black mushrooms, a “noisy affair”

in constant motion.

We celebrated every occasion with your Jello cheese

delight and tunnel cake—Jello mixed with cream cheese,

cool and sweet against the crumbly nut crust.

And the tunnel cake—you always tried

to make an angel food cake,

but somehow, a hollow tunnel would form inside.

You introduced us to foil-wrapped chicken, a dim sum,

each morsel of chicken placed lovingly in the center

of a small square of foil. You’d marinate the chicken in soy,

Shaoxing wine, a touch of sesame oil,

then carefully fold each packet

like a small silver present. When they came out of the oven,

we’d each unwrap ours, the steam rising warm and fragrant,

your labor of love—you, the heart

in the center of all things.

Egg Foo Young

We didn’t know it yet, but it was our last family banquet

before the pandemic lock downs, the last time

I sat with my extended family in a Chinese restaurant,

happy and annoyed. I've been coming to the Riverside

for years, though I've never liked

the ubiquitous Chinese brown gravy

(aka soy sauce, beef broth, oyster sauce,

and corn starch) drenching

their bean curd, bok choy, sea urchins, and

other people’s children.

Their special Salt and Pepper Pork Chops

I renamed "deep-fried coarsely-chopped bones."

Inside the crispy crust was pork just pink enough

to make me squirm. I'm sorry... where's the other white meat?

The shrimp for the Prawns with Glazed Walnuts

was rubbery, not the expected mushy, mushy.  Hey,

what is the shelf  life of shrimp anyway? Skimpy dish.

One cousin exclaimed, "We need another one of these."

The Egg Foo Young—we’ve never seen anything

like that before—we spun around the table

on the lazy susan. Around and around it went.

The Lee’s have always served Egg Foo Young

as runny scrambled eggs with bean sprouts

poking through, nothing

like this dish ordered by my cousin’s girl, the vegan

with the tousled golden hair and teethy smile

who didn’t understand

the meaning of vegan. I joked about taking it home

and wearing it as a hat, after washing the glossy

Chinese brown sauce off.

I didn’t know then that it would be years before I saw

my family, never whole again, my mother spiraling

into dementia, asking which cousins rang the doorbell

to drop off the pizza, over

and over, and the pretty blonde vegan

whom my cousin loved, dying from stage 4 breast cancer,

comforted by a chill Great Pyrenees

that needed tranquilizers.

Author Bio:

Priscilla Lee was born in San Francisco and grew up in Chinatown and the Sunset District. She earned her BA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of the poetry collections Wishbone (2000) and Chiu’s House of Lovely Animals: Confessional Poetry Written by a Ridiculously Funny Asian American Manic Depressive (2013). Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage (2003), Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves: A Contemporary Anthology of Asian American Women’s Poetry (2008), and The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems of the San Francisco Bay Watershed (2010). Her honors and awards include a Poetry Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies, an an Emily Chamberlain Cook Poetry Prize from UC Berkeley, and a James D. Phelan Literary Award from the San Francisco Foundation. She lives in San Francisco.