Invoking the Dragon

Angel Island, California, 1911

At night, she hears water washing

over the rocks and wind rasping

through the rusted screen

of the barracks window.

She dreams of a dragon’s shadow

spreading over walls

where poetry is carved in the soft wood

by those waiting to be processed.

The creature’s wings engulf

some of her own verse, engraved

with scissors she borrowed 

from her sewing basket. Written

in the old ways of the Tang Poet,

she laments:

Already, they have sent him back

(my husband of two years)

leaving me here

to walk in the company

of pigeons and weeds.

Pine needles lie

scattered around the garden

like cheap pins

fallen from my hair

that has grown too long

and heavy to hold.

 I want to cut this bolt of silk,

 lessen its burden and the darkness

of hours that define my stay.

The night is soot and its haze

a spider’s web snagging

the flash of my tears

and a handful of faint stars.

Nothing seems hopeful,

but on some nights, (adrift in sleep)

she mounts the serpent's body.

His mane black as her own,

his spine agile

and they fly home to Jinhua

where green willows sweep

the current south

and the river carries

spawning fish and whispers

of a man who casts

his line into the water, his deep

longing for her into prayer.

Opened In 1910, Angel Island (in San Francisco Bay) became a detention center for Chinese immigrants who were held for intensive questioning, quarantine, and deportation purposes. Within its prison-like facility, men and women were separated by sex and race including married couples. Longing for their homeland, relatives, and escape from unsanitary conditions, many engraved poems in the barracks walls. While most of the men’s poems survived, many of the women’s were lost in a fire that destroyed the female quarters in 1940.

About the poet

Wendy A. Howe is an English teacher and freelance writer who lives in California. Her poetry reflects her interest in myth, women in conflict and history. She has been published in the following journals: The Poetry Salzburg Review, The Interpreter's House, Corvid Queen, Strange Horizons, The Acropolis Journal, The Copperfield Review (now closed), Stirring, A Literary Collection, Indelible Magazine, The Ekphrastic Challenges and many others. Her most recent work has been featured in Flowers Of The Field and The Otherworld Magazine.