Fuchi

Fuchi when we passed the stockyard
or city incinerator. Who threw a fart,
Nana would ask, as if the offense
were a grenade or football. I didn’t know
the origins of her phrase, its handoff,
until I learned tirar in Spanish class.
I’ve read of toxins in electronics plants—
chemicals that poison, cause cancers,
numb the senses of smell & taste
with odors in so-called clean rooms.
Did the smells elicit a fuchi? Fool please,
I hear in the word. I hear Chinese too.
Think of those moves in Qi Gong—
part the horse’s mane, strum the lute,
grasp the sparrow’s tail. Could they ward
off cancers? Release toxins? Repair
one’s chi after one’s shift? I remember
watching Chi Chi Rodríguez parry
his putter with a flourish after sinking
a put, then sheath the club at his waist
in a make-believe scabbard. In grad school,
I learned of Kristeva’s abject, those
liminal spaces between what we reject
& what we obsess. Growing up chino,
the question I was most often asked,
besides what are you, was do you know
kung fu. Kung, I looked up, means
skillful work, hard training, or endeavor.
Fu means time spent. I ask my nana
about her time in the factory. I worked
the scopes, she says, looking for marks.
If the wafer was scratched, I threw it out.
What is it we keep? What is obsolete?
That’s when I think my eyes started
to go bad. What kind of seeing is hardwired
in our circuitry? They were
like tiny little maps, she tells me, of the city.