34 contemporary poetry
with her ‘blind fi ngertips’ next to ‘an entire wall without windows’
(p. 79 ). Throughout the poem Song pays particular attention to the
artisanship and unacknowledged beauty of the seamstress’s tools:
‘Hands moist and white like lilies / The white-gloved hands of the
magician’ which move with ‘miraculous fl ight’ (p. 79 ). She also
evokes elements from the Western fairy tale since her movement
is described as the spider’s slow-descending movement ‘attached
to an invisible thread / I let myself down off the chair’ (p. 79 ).
Her body establishes a horrifying verisimilitude with her work; the
spine bent over her sewing machine creates the ‘silhouette of a coat
hanger’ (p. 79 ).
Picture Bride also places a considered focus on mother-and-
daughter relationships. In many of the poems this relationship
is often framed in antagonistic terms as an older generation dic-
tates the rules of fi lial practice. ‘The Youngest Daughter’ frames
this relationship through the practised ritual of bathing and food
preparation, the ‘ritual of tea and rice’ and gingered fi sh (p. 6 ). The
fl eshy mother of the poem appears far more visceral than the sickly
daughter with her skin as ‘damp and pale as rice paper’ (p. 5 ) and
the colour of aspirin. Song makes us acutely aware of the distance
between the domestic carer duties and the world of outdoor work.
Comparing their skin, she notices not only the difference in colour
- her mother’s is ‘parched’ in the ‘drying sun’ (p. 5 ) of the fi elds
- but also the cartography of blue bruises from the medication of
insulin. The speaker describes her mother as fecund with animal-
like terminology. Her breasts are ‘like two walruses / fl accid and
whiskered around the nipples’ (p. 5 ). This intimate portrait also
suggests a suffocating distaste as she thinks ‘six children and an
old man / have sucked from these brown nipples’ (p. 5 ). A sense of
confi nement generates the youngest daughter’s desire to break free
from domestic and fi lial responsibilities. The speaker admits that
her mother knows she is ‘not to be trusted’ and is ‘even now plan-
ning my escape’ (p. 6 ). The fi nal stanza’s focus upon ideas of release,
travel and even migration is echoed when the motif of a thousand
cranes patterning the curtain ‘fl y up in a sudden breeze’ (p. 6 ).
The fi ve sections of Picture Bride are named after the American
painter Georgia O’Keeffe’s fl ower paintings: ‘Black Iris’,
‘Sunfl owers’, ‘Orchids’, ‘Red Poppy’ and ‘The White Trumpet