We're getting poetic up here. It's about time we kicked off a brand new feature: Angry Poetry Corner, a regular weekly spotlight on the work of API poets, curated by Cara, our Angry Asian Intern. Because you could use a little more poetry in your life. In the corner this week, Narinda Heng:
perfect EnglishNarinda Heng lives and writes in Los Angeles, where she has been working with various arts/community organizations since 2007. She keeps an online notebook called Long Cool Hallway, is co-founder and co-producer of a web series called That's What She Said, and blogs at Transitional Zone.
(what i wish i had said to the man i met while climbing at Malibu Creek)
i once thought
that speaking flawless English
would protect me
that if i could
enunciate perfectly,
read aloud quickly and smoothly,
i’d be able to escape
walking through this nation
as foreigner
i quickly realized
that my face precedes
my speech and no matter
what falls from my lips
i will always carry
the look of an Other,
and the impulse to
call out “Chink!” and
“ching chong” does not
wait for me to speak,
does not care whether
i have an accent
how dare you, middle-class, middle-aged, white man,
rant to me about Asian self-ghettoization;
what do you know of what it’s like
to find yourself feeling powerless and strange,
to be caught between wanting to belong
and constantly being pushed away,
to be pulled toward drowning
by the slant of your eyes
and the tint of your skin?
is it so hard to grasp
that humans gravitate toward those
who acknowledge that they are human?
i once thought that
speaking perfect English
would protect me
i never thought people like you
might take it as license
to rail against
people like me
to me.