this blogpost will not get all full of ruminations. instead i’m going to post a poem i wrote a long, long time ago, and have been editing recently.

but firstly, since for whatever reason, hella people find my site after googling how to say love in vietnamese, i would just like to say… it’s anh yeu em. simple, neh?

oh, and this is hella random, but i found a facebook group that has a bunch of people named hua in it. which trips me the hell out, because outside of my family, i’ve never met anyone with that name… it’s actually more common than i thought. whoa. it kinda gives me a warm sense of community and continuity, that other people share my surname. weird, but true.

onto the poem.

———————————————————–
a chinese restaurant

my homegirl katie tells me
‘people are fucking stupid.’

She comes to this conclusion
after working for more than a year at Mr. Wang’s China Grill.
And yes, before you ask, it’s really called that.
And yes, Mr. Wang is a dick.

I guess once someone’s spent any amount of time
working at a chinese restaurant, they grow a sense of cynicism
about the meaning of it all.

It’s been more than a year, more than long enough
for her to get sick of wiping windows, long nights
and longer days, shit ass crab wontons
a boss who doesn’t stop hitting on her,
old white people who assume she doesn’t speak English
just because she’ vietnamese, their grandsons
who try to kick game
with the two words they learned in mandarin, bratty kids
and even brattier parents.

‘And ni hao to you too’
‘No sir, we do not have spaghetti. This is a chinese restaurant.’
‘No ma’am, we can’t move your table because you don’t like the feng shui.’
‘Yes sir, general gao’s chicken is really authentic chinese food’
‘No, I will not go on a date with you.’
‘Yes sir, no sir’

The litany continues till she can see herself,
young woman who doesn’t know who she is yet,
going out back to the boxes she packaged earlier in the day,
grabbing her stuff, walking out.

She imagines saying, as a parting remark to her boss
‘Your food is shit, your customers are asssholes,
I’d rather date your eighty year old father.
Turn the light on, just because it’s low
doesn’t mean we can’t tell you’re ugly.’

But she’d never say something like that,
she’s too nice, kind hearted enough
to feel guilty about uncharitable thoughts

but wishes she could stop

stop smiling like she likes this shit, as if a dollar above the minimum
were worth the way her legs ache
and the feel of her hands, that her mother once told her
were her grandfather’s
a calligrapher back in the homeland

wishes she had the courage to say she hates working here,
hates doubting herself, hates the down economy
high gas prices and college loans

but she’s a fighter, struggled to bitch about it now

So, no wonder she says it,
‘People are fucking stupid.’

i tell her she’s right
i’m not stupid enough to argue with a vietnamese woman
when she has access to kitchen knives.

It’s six hundred miles of distance and two years since I’ve seen her last.
i tell her i love her,
that she’s more beautiful than she’d ever know
her hair windblown, her eyes stretched in a smile
the girl who’s too busy to find love

She laughs, thinking i’m faker than this restaurant’s ‘classic chinese cooking’,
and i grin like i always do, ‘cause ain’t no one have to believe it
for it to be true.

Maybe people really are stupid.

————————————

oh and i just wanted to plug some events for my boston and new york folks.

this friday in boston, boston progress arts collective will be throwing its monthly open mic series, east meets words at 9pm in cambridge at east meets west bookstore. dope name isn’t it? guess who thought of it?

sunday the 15th, sulu series will be doing our monthly series at the bowery poetry club at 9. the crazy and creative and wonderful kristina wong will be performing, as well as my hella dope talented homegirl cynthia lin.

much love. and let me leave you with this.

life is moments of heart pounding consciousness amid a klonopin haze.

View all New York City events at Eventful