Willie Lin

PROVENANCE

Where are you from?

—From cities of mortar,

from morsel
& petal,

from mortals
& peddlers

of disagreeable mettle

From landscape
paintings where

tree-lines rise
as an insolent question

From a distant promise
where I learned

to spit, fold
myself

into the pleat of
a dress, walk

backwards
through burred rooms

From cupidity,
serendipity

Outside
of Provence,

outside of premise,
formerly

a province of faceless,
faithless oddities

Photographs show
a family in

an alphabet of snow,
in coal-legged dusk,

show my childhood
among monuments

of the previous war
or the next

& at twenty
I began again from pre-

position, in truce,
in truth?

In predominantly white
institutions

I learned
the language,

showed my teeth,
swallowed

my ease, my wrongness

& at nine, at thirty-four
I began again with

the right question

Lecture halls,
dead doorways

I’d lived in prudence,
past perfect

impermanence

Go back centuries,
go back

to your country

Show me in-
difference

Teach me, I don’t know
my difference,

forget 

really, I am from
the past-

ime where I may appease,
please

Am I saying this right?
I am

from particle
physics,

from dirt-poor im-
pudence

WILLIE LIN lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. A Kundiman fellow, she is the author of Conversation Among Stones (BOA Editions, 2023).