True God's Day
Image by Jo Ramsay
I.
My mom and the other Japanese
kodan ladies are collected
to prepare the offering table
for the most important
day of the year, January 1st,
given to God.
Like any Korean altar,
fuji apples, nashi pears,
and navel oranges
are constructed into
neat cylindrical towers.
The magic of stacking
fruit upward is skewers
that join one apple to the next,
invisible joints that connect
up down left right.
While working, they talk
in Japanese, hard flat words
I never learned.
A name is said and repeated
Ah, so and so’s daughter.
The one who broke her first blessing?
Will anyone marry her now?
Well all we can do is pray.
I’ve only met her a few times
because she is older, away at college
but I know I don’t want to become her,
life laid open for others to pick at
like chopsticks separating the flesh
of steamed fish from bone.
The mood lightens with a joke.
They cover their mouths
as they laugh, then go silent.
Soon the fruit is done so
they turn to stack the sweets:
bars of kit kats, puffed rice crackers,
and this year, choco pies.
In another room they marinate
bulgogi and prepare
the ingredients for New Year’s
rice cake soup. These recipes
passed down by spiritual mother
to new recruit, no biology involved
until I showed up with my mother.
II.
Later that day
families arrive in the gymnasium
for God’s Day service dressed
in suits and skirts nicer
than usual church clothes.
I’m wearing new socks
like I do on all holy days.
We recite the family pledge
in Korean. I am mumbles
and whispers because I don’t speak
the language and am forgetting
the 8 points I once memorized
for Sunday school.
Next we sing a holy song
I’ll give my life—and my love—
unto the one—God of love—
A Beatles song is next.
During the sermon
I take in the completed altar,
the colorful fruit stacks
from yesterday on white tablecloth.
Next to the offering table is a portrait
of an elderly Korean couple,
the same photo in our wallets.
Two empty chairs beside the altar
are reserved for the pictured couple.
More than leaders, they are our true parents.
The sermon ends with a prayer
and donations are collected.
More singing. “Happy Birthday”
but we know to change the words
to “Happy True God’s Day.”
We join hands and raise them
to rejoice in mansei,
10,000 years of peace.
Families once in rows
together now split up:
kids deconstruct the altar
teenagers group to their cliques
and over coffee and potluck
parents will cut out the futures
of their children, carefully staying
within the lines that separate
us from the outside world.
Poetry
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April 8,
2020
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2-minute
read
Yoshika Wason
is a teacher and writer. She earned her BA in English and secondary education from Boston College, where she was editor-in-chief of ASIAM, an Asian Pacific Islander American literary magazine. Her works have appeared in Ghost City Review, Ricepaper Magazine, and others. She is currently working on a collection called Outside Wrld. Yoshika is from Bridgeport, Connecticut (USA) and currently resides in Aomori Prefecture (Japan). Learn more at yoshikawason.com.