even when I see dull lead fragments sticking

into his brown skin.

I didn’t want to believe him,

even as I helped him wash his wounds.

You need someone to care for your life,

or at least your dignity.

My dad had a son who believed in invisible mosquitoes

more than the evil of men.

Darth Vader had a son who could not understand

his father had been corrupted into killing the best version

of himself.

My dad had a son who thought he was just another gook

who didn’t know what caused him pain.

They say we’re all equal, but we are the ones standing here

with the history of our fathers’ blood on our hands.

The Reveal

On a slow night, two Chinese boys in hoodies

kick a hacky sack under the lights

in the parking lot outside their family’s restaurant,

the asphalt a black and blacker ocean

stretching past neon signs now turned off

save for the promise of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Haloed in light, they could be anything:

overworked, bullied, heartsick, in love.

What can you do but guess?

Asking would ruin their moment.

They are not about you anyway—

what passes between them is in slow arcs

ignoring thick, painted lines beneath them

they will negotiate, enforce their own rules.

When you were a boy, this parking lot

was vast, littered by tall white buckets

and punctured Lysol cans.

That’s how the homeless got high,

your friends told you.

Inside, you wait for your mom to get off work.

An elderly white man asks you questions as you shift

from foot to foot,

then offers you a dollar

to come home with him.

You say nothing,

except no.

Your mom’s coworkers from the fabric store come out later.

They wished you’d told them earlier, they say,

hands on your shoulders,

their eyes turning back and forth to scan

the brick horizon,

clutching at you like a boat almost lost to sea.

I’m okay, you want to say to them.

I’ll be okay.

Years from that moment you step into a parking lot

and the flat land reveals the entire sky to you.

Immense, total, blue,

the cars and concrete

a tiny fraction lining the bottom

of your vision.

Condos now,

and a Chinese restaurant,

the night falling

and never righting itself

two boys playing hacky sack

stuffing their hands into their pockets,

laughing into the dark

as if they can’t believe

what they are doing,

bored already,

heads tilted back,

faces eclipsed by the edges

of their hoods.

Kids

—I know there is a greater chance that someone will call my daughter a chink than she has a chance of finding true love. —David Mura

In a dark back corner of me I didn’t want to have kids.

How much blood and history can one last name hold.

Others in my family tell me what they did to survive to come here,

and who didn’t.

You should be glad to be in America, it’s better for your kind here