Quan Found his Daddy in Frisco.

I'm sure that he got his poontang and rice
hot from Nam Ha` every Saturday night
while he told his USA white knight lies,
how bright the steel of the Golden Gate was,
bright the dawn, and safe the homes in his city.

The nuns never told me who Daddy was,
but they told me God it was who made me
and told me about Our Lord Jesus Christ
while I, burning midnight oil in their office,
taught myself clandestine history.

Later with nothing but holes in my pockets
to play with I hitched to the Tenderloin
and found my Daddy in '93
half the way into his brown paper bag:
"Quan? Shit! I wanted it named after me."

I stared at him like the katydid did
I saw on Willow Street, eyes on an aphid,
John a slow moving bug on a limb,
in a manner of speaking, of course; I
pretending to sip his bag, he pretending

I was his son when I split his nose
for my patrimony, a measly five bucks
from his wallet I gave a tutelary
spirit, selling her love, a drop-dead beauty,
haunting me with a drop-dead Nam Ha`.