Timothy Yu

 

Chinese Dream 14 

 

Race, friends, is boring.  Everyone says so.

Hashtag all lives matter, the channel turns,

we ourselves live and turn,

and moreover the TV told me yesterday

(unendingly) ‘Ever to talk about race

means you have no

 

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no

Inner Resources, because all I see is race.

People have race,

literature has race, especially great literature,

Henry has race, with his blacks & whites

made up as his feelings

 

about love & sex & art, which have race.

And our social ills, & sin, in Chinese drag

are somehow a dog

that’s eaten itself, & its tail miserably remains

as our mirror, bone or breaker, heaving

on tide: us, flag.

 

Justin Chin

from Burn

 “He has fallen asleep, passed out, is snoring like the last hog on earth, sweating like a lost marathon runner. His white t-shirt is drenched, the sheets and the pillows are drenched with his sweat. I want to sleep but cannot. I paw him, run my hands over his wet body but he cannot wake as I cannot sleep. I wipe his sweat off on m chest, I pull his shirt up and rub my face into his sweaty belly. I adore everything that comes out of his pores, his bitter toxic sweat, his stinky overheated body.

Our love is bound by chemicals. How I hold my arm out to him and let him run the vein into my vein. How beautiful my blood looks as it surges into the syringe, like a rare flower blossoming, and how beautiful it feels as he pumps it, chemical rich, back into me….”

Justin Chin

No Won-Tons for Whitey

The special’s not for you,

The brown rice much too white,

The soy sauce much too salty,

The noodles way too cheap.

No won-tons for whitey,

No nookie for you,

No razzle for baby,

No yum-yums for me.

Justin Chin

 

The Fisting Bottom

Soon, the carnival of me will be no more

than tossing sausages into an open cave.

The dark maw of Proud Monsters devouring

its shining arrogant young. For those who escape

the kill -- the wily, the motivated, the schemers,

the pure (certainly purer-than-thou), the chosen ones,

the untouchables -- the wreck is never far

from mind, never close at hand, but always sticks

to the back of the throat.

I have turned myself inside-out to turn

my understanding right-side-up or down; I have

wielded my weapon with cunning & grace & skill.

I have lived past the point

of impact; I have seen my disciples and my foes.

I have courted perfect loves and imperfect time; and still

I long to bloom. Rosebud

was never the name of my sled.