Ally Ang
Your Father Asks You to Stop Talking about Race
with your white mother, because it makes her feel
uncomfortable.
your mother says, sometimes
I’m afraid that you don’t love me
because I’m white & you rub her back
to comfort her as she cries.
as a child, your mother would pluck
the dark hairs from your upper lip
& between your eyebrows as you squirmed
in her lap. you wonder why
you are doomed to partake in this
Sisyphean ritual, why you were cursed
with an invasion of overactive follicles
that sprouted across your adolescent face.
you envy your mother: her big eyes
that sparkle flecks of emerald, even sapphire
when the sunlight hits them just right. her skin,
delicate & smooth like the ground covered
in first winter’s snow before any human touch
has sullied it.
you stand in front of the mirror, observing
your brownish-yellow skin, your dull muddy eyes
that disappear into slits when you smile with your teeth,
the thick black hair that covers your head, your face,
your arms & legs with heartless lack of discernment.
in school, a boy says you have big eyes
for an asian & you are strangely flattered
even though you know this is not
a compliment. in photographs, you open
your eyes wide & smile your best closed-mouth
smile.
in your suburban Connecticut town, your father
wears his accent like a scarlet letter, A for alien.
a cop places his hand on his gun & tells your father
to go back to his country, a country
that tried to kill him before his tenth birthday.
your father asks you to stop talking about race
with your white mother, because she is trying
her best. because she loves you. because
isn’t that enough?
Ode to My Mustache
O shameful masculinity
O playground ridicule
O little brown hairs flowering
my upper lip:
make me a garden watered
by budding womanhood & stubborn genes.
how many hours have I spent
bleaching you into oblivion?
how many white girls
have turned you into a target
painted onto my face?
O sweetest relic
of awkward teenage years, no matter
how hard I try to deny you
you keep coming back
& for that
I am grateful.
A Vegetarian Goes to H Mart
to finger the refrigerated meats. something about forbidden
fruit, how the flesh gives beneath my fingertips,
makes me lick my lips with pleasure. my gorge rises
as I imagine tearing into the muscle & sinew
of raw pork belly, sucking the juice off the bone, bursting
with carnality. I grit my teeth through the revulsion
because one can never truly shed animal instinct.
in the seafood aisle, my lungs fill with the stench
of fish, a potpourri of fresh death. I don’t turn away
from the milky eyes & viscous tentacles
of a neatly-packaged octopus because my people
aren’t afraid to look death in the face. we eat our fish
with the heads still on & pick the bones out of our teeth
at the dinner table. some call it impolite, but I call it
lack of pretense. a thousand vacant eyes
look back at me, open-mouthed as if to say
someday, you too will be gutted.
until then, I feast.
