Boyhood

      

By Yuan Changming

Boyhood Buoys (1): Village Fashion   For the whole school year of the seventh grade I kept dreaming of a new pair of tennis shoes   White-rimmed, blue-covered, that all boys From rich families in towns and cities   Were said to be wearing, even when some of Them were sleeping at night. At least three times   A day, I would imagine myself goose-walking In them until one morning I noticed the pretty girl   Living next door to us in the village came to School much later than usual. While every other   Boy burst into a loud unanimous wow I proudly whispered to my best pal:   You know, her foster mother shares Exactly the same family name with me!   Boyhood Buoys (2): Secret Tryst   I never understand the taboo of my village school But all boys avoided speaking to girls, and vice versa   Nevertheless, whenever I felt the real urge to See my girl in private, I would hum aloud while   Walking out of our classroom, and in the evening She and I would meet behind a low sand ridge in the   Dried riverbed. Watching the summer stars in Innocent silence, we would sit for a while deep in   Each other’s arms until we departed in equal silence Even without hitting upon the idea of a real kiss   Her name was Chen Yeqiong, a tall, slim and pretty Fellow villager, with a birthmark above her right lips   That’s when we were in grade eight; that’s as early As half a century ago, on the other side of the world Boyhood Buoys (3): The Most Memorable Science Class   We didn’t know how or why, but we came to be Convinced that swallowing a fresh snake gall Would give us a more insightful pair of eyes   So, after catching a three-feet long grass snake We skinned it off carefully, and cooked a big Pot of soup with its old chicken-like meat   (O boy, how delicious it tastes! But my mom Dare not go to the kitchen for a whole week)   The next morning, I blew enough air into the Slough, made it into a vivid staff dragon, went To school early and put it in the top-open desk   Closest to the podium. When the lid is raided, The fully wound dragon threw the whole class Into shriek. That’s our only field science class Boyhood Buoys (4): Frogmeat Sale   To earn a couple of yuan to buy some Kerosene oil for our lamp in the house I followed my neighbor, an older boy To catch frogs in the middle of night   It was always a sure thing to do: where- Ever we heard a frog sing, we would Stealthily approach it, illuminate it With torchlight, and pick it up with   All the ease we could enjoy. Sometimes I did feel sorry for the frog: its eyes were Shining bright under the summer stars But why did it fail to escape from danger?   Early next morning, we would skin our catch And went to the nearest town, shouting aloud ‘Fresh frog meat !’ like the frogs singing at the Top of their voice, after dusk, in the rice fields Boyhood Buoys (5): Waterbuffalo-Boy   How I envied Doggie when his little hunchbacked Father was appointed the caretaker of the tallest Water buffalo in our communist commune:   Every day, after school, he would ride her For his father, plodding along from one Grass spot to another. While I had to dig   All kinds of obscure plants for our ever-stunted Pig and collect chicken shit from every household For the collective, he could take a sightseeing   Ride around the whole village (and even enjoy Fucking the handsome creature with his arm And fist as he liked), until one day, I tried to bribe   Him into allowing me to play my flute on her Moving back and thus fulfill this idyllic dream But he barked back with a broken voice: No way! Boyhood Buoys (6): Deeper Than the First Cut   With a lower-than-the-average performance For every class, you never gave a damn To Mr Zhou (the most senior teacher In your village school) when he announced You were far less smart than your mom   But after reading some sample passages From A-graded compositions, Mr Zhou Began to cut deeper as he continued to Ridicule the way a slow student coined Awkward idioms and, worse still, compared Local anti-revolutionary elements to piles Of cap-like shit of water buffalos   How can you laugh together with others! He pointed his finger like a snake head Right at my nose while the whole class Guffawed: Don’t you remember you’re The very inventor of this disgusting simile? Boyhood Buoys (7): How My Light Was Saved    Every summer, I would be jailed within our straw-thatched cottage for two weeks, while other fourth- or fifth-graders nake-swam in ponds monkey-climbed trees, or frog-jumped around the rice fields in the village   both eyes sealed with sticky secretions, I lived in total blindness day and night, receiving neither treatment by any fellow villager nor any care from adults in my large fostering household. Years later I learned it was infection that resulted from eating too much homemade pepper sauce, often the only dish we had to go with our make-do meals   I never understood why I had to suffer from such hurting blindness even though I have only one eye actually functioning well in my life yet I do know it was this hidden fear about permanent loss of vision That has made me all the more sensitive to light, as well as darkness   Boyhood Buoys (8): Firewood Gathering   While town folks used electricity in every conceivable Way, we did not have enough firewood even for cooking So, I went out with a short scythe, against summer heat Or winter chills, each time farther away from home To cut whatever wild plants I could find after school   Once, I cut my own left hand so deep that I Became horrified as blood gushed out of My small palm. Of course, the wound Healed soon enough, but ever since then I have had a curved middle finger (because of Bad bandage), a finger that prevented me from Learning swordsmanship to follow the steps Of Li Po, a legendary knight and the king of poetry   Boyhood Buoys (9): First Originative Simile   Before each breakfast, in grade five, I would get up In haste, with a pair of quasi-chopsticks and a pair Of half-opened eyes, going from cottage to cottage In the whole village to collect chicken shit, like lost Gold or silver coins, into a broken basket, something I could contribute to our commune as fertilizer for   My fostering family. Occasionally, I was lucky Enough to find a pile of goat or water-buffalo shit   So inspired by these findings that I once could not Help using it to refer to the anti-revolutionary Elements in our village when I wrote compositions In school. Though this simile turned out a big Laugh stock for the whole school, it was the first Image I have ever added to our red literary canon   Boyhood Buoys (10): Local Celebrity   By playing Hu Chuankuei, a vulgar and stupid Military commander in a popular Peking opera I became more famous than our villager head: Folks even from neighboring villages could readily Recognize me and would intimate my voice Indeed, while other boys in grade seven or eight Had not enough to eat in their own homes, I could Earn a couple of extra meals outside our school   However, when I went to the county town to attend Senior high, my acting career came to a sudden end Not because of my mother’s intervention (for fear that My acting was making me into a vulgar and stupid Student), but because of the trend gone with the wind   It was then that I learned all the lessons about being A celebrity on the stage, or a nonentity under it Bio: Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, began to learn the English alphabet at age 19, and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan at poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 collections (most recently SINOSAUR) . Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline & Poetry Daily, among nearly 1,989 others, across 49 countries, Yuan was nominated, and served on the jury, for Canada’s National Magazine Award (poetry category). Early in 2022, Yuan began to write and publish fiction.