in america, our tongues are burning

when i was ten, 

i cut off my mother tongue

and tossed her body into the sea of my own ignorance, 

the muddled syntax of my native language

drowning beneath waves and waves of colonial grip. 

i tried to baptize my tongue--

christen it American, bleach my accent in whiteness. 

i begged for acceptance

from my peers, erased my lineage

and murdered my heritage just for a chance to be normal 

because here is the truth: 

in america, there is an unspoken witch hunt

in which they are the predators

and we are the sinners, the hexes, the burdens. 

our tongues and forefathers and sacrifices

are burning at the stake, doused in the kerosene of whitewash. 

they make ghosts out of our ancestry, 

scrub our trauma into the forgotten pages of history textbooks

like our brothers and sisters working below min. wage

for a chance at the holy prophecy known as the American Dream. 

the pause between this poem

is my silence when a boy tells me to go back to my f**king country, 

calls me g**k and ch*nk and dog eater,

and seven-year-old me is taught to detest my own skin, 

is taught that i am more construct than human,

is taught that self-hate is the most important thing i’ll ever learn in school.

here is the painful truth: 

this country has never been ours to call home. 

to be both american and non-white and immigrant 

is to be the perpetual foreigner, 

to be labeled an alien

before you’ve even stepped into the room. 

dear vincent

when the wooden frame

of that baseball bat entered your skull, 

when those men shouted,

it’s because of you motherf**kers that we’re out of work!

while you lay on the floor, 

nebula searing across splattered brain and splintered bone, 

what did you say?

did you tell them,

i’m not japanese--i’m american, 

did you think about the difference between denotation and connotation,

how asian-american means to be a phantom citizen,

to be treated like an unwanted demon in this kingdom of supposed equality?

as your ribs struggled to grasp another breath of air, 

did you wonder about the toxicity of your own body, 

how it felt to be murdered for simply existing, 

for the crime of drinking and laughing and talking at a bar

in the wrong place at the wrong time?

did you tell them, 

please, my family, my fiancée--

did you think about how your wedding day would become your funeral, 

how your mother’s tears would collect like dust 

at the bottom of your casket?

did you think about how your father wouldn’t be able to sleep, 

the moon simply a cruel reminder of your ghostly face 

as he stared at your mangled body, 

unable to recognize his own son?

how your fiancée’s screams would echo 

against the walls of a lonely house,

aching for the wedding suit and baby photos and family dinners,

the future that would never be? 

did you tell them, 

why, why me--

thinking about how the judge would not rule it a racially motivated hate crime,

how your murderers would serve no jail time,

how your name--your legacy--would cease to exist

in history books, in protests, in justice?

or did you simply lay there in silence,

eyes wide open, limbs flailing for just one--one more--breath?

vincent, i’m sorry.

i’m sorry that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,

i’m sorry that if you were alive today,

you would still always be in the wrong place at the wrong time,

that you would still have to defend your basic right 

to live in your own skin,

just like the rest of us. 

to glow like the sun

to the man who catcalled me

for the existential crime of trying to use a public bathroom:

i was born in monsoon season,

my body a tsunami that can drown cities in its wake, 

my dna made of salt and blood. i am the aftermath

of two wars and a revolution, of my parents’

immigrant dreams, so determined they broke the ocean in half 

to be here. i am the almond-slant of my eyes, 

the golden halo of my skin. a creation of god. 

so when you tell me i look

cute for a ch*nk boy, when you wolf-whistle at me

with teeth sharp as daggers, 

think my body small

and your existence big,

i will take the napalm from my mouth

and plant landmines on your skin.

i will raise my hands, calloused and strong

from carrying the weight of a fractured bloodline,

and wipe the lecherous grin

off your privileged face.

this is a revolution you cannot silence.

a war in which i emerge victorious,

in which i reap the spoils of your ignorance

and stroll off the battlefield  

as you suffocate in a pool of your own blood. 

like the sun, i am learning 

how to be proud of my own glow. 

so the next time you try to smother me

with your unwanted advances,

i will shine so brightly that your narrow-minded eyes

will be blinded by my presence

while I walk away 

without so much as a glance in your direction,

my body burning brilliantly with warmth,

untouchable, invincible. 

bound

in dreams, i imagine

immigrant bones stretched from atlantic to pacific,

yellow bodies buried beneath train tracks,

railroads harvested from their pain,

their screams, tears stinging cracked earth,

knuckles split open like the miles and miles of iron and steel

we built for white profit. 

and thirteen years later, 

the Chinese Exclusion Act

proclaims us outsiders in this land of golden opportunity

so that even our successes always end in tragedy,

and we are told our bodies are simply cogs in a machine,

numbers, slaves, ghosts.

not human here. 

i think of the model minority myth,

the women and men and children working in slums

and chinatowns infested with litter and p*ss-smelling air,

their backs hunched in restaurants and laundromats and nail salons,

bodies flailing barely above the poverty line--

i think of quiet voices,

the second generation, our necks craned

over textbooks, over homework

in submissive obedience, clinging to our proximity to whiteness,

climbing on the backs of other others,

reaching desperately

for a status we cannot obtain--

i think of the past, 

japanese internment and pacific railroad tracks, 

our ancestors buried beneath inglorious layers of dirt and bone,

how hope for the future generation

was the only comfort they had ever known--

in dreams, i hear their voices, singing:

young one, young one, listen--

so the caged bird is clipped of its wings,

and our voices are silenced by the echoes of their shouts,

but you mustn’t wait 

nor sit in complicit silence.

you mustn’t wait,

for their power will only grow stronger

if you choose to remain blind.