Bad Driver, or Asian American Activists Who Talk about Their Own People Like They Are “Other”

Driving down a one-way street,

the Asian driver says Asians are the worst drivers

and they mean

the other Asian drivers

and not themselves

from inside a glass box,

air-conditioning in the summer,

heat in the winter,

doors

autolocked.

The Asian includes him- or herself as a bad driver in the hopes

that others think this makes them

a good driver.

The heated leather seats,

the premium trim,

the robot that tells them

they are going the right way.

They pass other Asians who

can’t afford as nice a car or

risk getting pulled over or

have trouble reading the guide book or

can’t read the language on the signs or

don’t even have insurance or

their license is expired so they are scared

to drive too fast or

their cousin got pulled over once and

beaten down by the cops or

a cop pulled a gun on

them and said something about you people and war

and no one heard about it but

the Asian who wants to be seen

as the good driver

who was born

with

cruise control

zooms right by

on that one-way street

they are not talking

to the other Asians

the only time

they need to make

eye contact

with the people

they are talking about

and for

is when

they are

passing them

by

It Was Flame

Slavery

indentured servitude

migrant labor

genocide to clear land for theft

minimum wage so low

we can’t see the ceiling:

America has been in business.

Shackle to sow.

Smallpox to blanket.

Guns bristle the border.

Lighter kisses hooch,

and how many times will you burn down Chinatown,

or whatever enclave we have been forced into,

to manifest your destiny.

One Black life would be one too many

and yet the police

multiply the number of murders nightly

as they have for

hundreds of years.

Teach me the

English

meaning of these words:

fair

justice

equity

as our bodies

are demarcated

by the light of our own

burning history.

They sang that it was wind blowing majestic across this nation—really it was flame.

Oriental Flavor

Oriental flavor must be a sidekick flavor / tastes like the margin not the center / tastes like an ally not the masses / tastes like napalm on a belly dancer / tastes like conical hats and flip-flops sweeping under trees riddled with bullet holes / tastes like overfished sushi and tears shed over killing dolphins / tastes like crushes on sushi waitresses / tastes like go back to where you came from / tastes like inverted ph fetish / tastes like fresh off the boat, straight into the housing projects / tastes like fiber-optic flowers in rotating glass cases / tastes like stabbings at Cedar Square / tastes like Aqua Net mist in New Wave hair / tastes like fish pulled out of mucky ponds by the highway for dinner / tastes like eight-hour perfume vapor in a sweatshop / tastes like a cop racially profiling Hmong / Cambodian / Pacific Islanders / Vietnamese / Chinese / Black / Indian / Latinx people / and on / and on / tastes like rust on a cell key thrown into a forgotten corner / tastes like the rust on a pirate blade / tastes like tears on a two-year-old toddler from a flashbang in a DEA raid / tastes like chinksweat from one who can dunk prime time and is called overrated / tastes like the middle of the crosshairs of a drone bomber / tastes like science concocting survival / tasteless until a new region of the tongue is discovered / dry until reconstituted with hot water / demonized spice packet / on whose tongue / can you taste hunger / for affordable resistance