Ink Knows No Borders

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by Patrice Vecchione


  and bowed her head to prayers she couldn’t understand.

  Hieu Minh Nguyen

  Pronounced

  You excavate anything that has tried to lodge itself

  in your body without permission. You bury the toothbrush

  against your right molar and scrape and scrape whatever

  you find. Loss makes you feel all the other losses.

  Eleven years later when you no longer eat pizza

  or speak Spanish, when your father’s silhouette invades

  your clenched jawline, you borrow his brisk gait,

  his snort, his face. People say you look white.

  Your father never does. The restaurant won’t seat

  you. The hostess says neither of you meet dress

  code (your father wearing a double-breasted suit).

  You are a man trying to roll your r’s. Where did

  they go? You are still trying to excavate the sounds

  you once dreamt in. You hardly remember your mother

  tongue. You are trying to pull something useable from

  the wreckage. It all feels familiar. Your best friend

  compliments your clean pronunciation. The way you have

  learned to let go of everything you once called home.

  Carlos Andrés Gómez

  Off-Island Chamorros

  My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old.

  During the first day at my new high school, the homeroom

  teacher asked me where I was from. “The Mariana Islands,”

  I answered. He replied: “I’ve never heard of that place.

  Prove it exists.” And when I stepped in front of the world map

  on the wall, it transformed into a mirror: the Pacific Ocean,

  like my body, was split in two and flayed to the margins. I

  found Australia, then the Philippines, then Japan. I pointed

  to an empty space between them and said: “I’m from this

  invisible archipelago.” Everyone laughed. And even though

  I descend from oceanic navigators, I felt so lost, shipwrecked

  on the coast of a strange continent. “Are you a citizen?”

  he probed. “Yes. My island, Guam, is a U.S. territory.”

  We attend American schools, eat American food, listen

  to American music, watch American movies and television,

  play American sports, learn American history, dream

  American dreams, and die in American wars. “You

  speak English well,” he proclaimed, “with almost no

  accent.” And isn’t that what it means to be a diasporic

  Chamorro: to feel foreign in a domestic sense.

  Over the last 50 years, Chamorros have migrated to

  escape the violent memories of war; to seek jobs, schools,

  hospitals, adventure, and love; but most of all, we’ve migrated

  for military service, deployed and stationed to bases around

  the world. According to the 2010 census, 44,000 Chamorros

  live in California, 15,000 in Washington, 10,000 in Texas,

  7,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 more in every other state

  and even Puerto Rico. We are the most “geographically

  dispersed” Pacific Islander population within the United

  States, and off-island Chamorros now outnumber

  our on-island kin, with generations having been born

  away from our ancestral homelands, including my daughter.

  Some of us will be able to return home for holidays, weddings,

  and funerals; others won’t be able to afford the expensive plane

  ticket to the Western Pacific. Years and even decades might pass

  between trips, and each visit will feel too short. We’ll lose contact

  with family and friends, and the island will continue to change

  until it becomes unfamiliar to us. And isn’t that, too, what it means

  to be a diasporic Chamorro: to feel foreign in your own homeland.

  And there’ll be times when we’ll feel adrift, without itinerary

  or destination. We’ll wonder: What if we stayed? What if we return?

  When the undertow of these questions begins pulling you

  out to sea, remember: migration flows through our blood

  like the aerial roots of i trongkon nunu. Remember: our ancestors

  taught us how to carry our culture in the canoes of our bodies.

  Remember: our people, scattered like stars, form new constellations

  when we gather. Remember: home is not simply a house,

  village, or island; home is an archipelago of belonging.

  Craig Santos Perez

  A New National Anthem

  The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National

  Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good

  song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets’

  red glare” and then there are the bombs.

  (Always, always there is war and bombs.)

  Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw

  even the tenacious high school band off key.

  But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call

  to the field, something to get through before

  the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas

  we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge

  could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps

  the truth is every song of this country

  has an unsung third stanza, something brutal

  snaking underneath us as we blindly sing

  the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands

  hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do

  like the flag, how it undulates in the wind

  like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,

  brought to its knees, clung to by someone who

  has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,

  when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly

  you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can

  love it again, until the song in your mouth feels

  like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung

  by even the ageless woods, the shortgrass plains,

  the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left

  unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,

  that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,

  that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving

  into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit

  in an endless cave, the song that says my bones

  are your bones, and your bones are my bones,

  and isn’t that enough?

  Ada Limón

  Portrait of Isako in Wartime

  Ohio, and I imagine her

  walking the train line

  tracks narrowed in the distance.

  Through her soles,

  the platform’s slats. She feels

  their unevenness

  in the flats of her feet. Noon-

  day heat and the wool

  of her jacket’s itchy.

  She’s got a bob, it’s 1943

  and the war’s on. No one

  in the station looks

  like her, but everyone’s

  looking at her.

  No explanation but the one

  in government-issued print.

  National Student Relocation

  Council. Early Release.

  The sentry in his watch-

  tower, barbed-wire fence

  and Stars and Stripes flapping

  in the wind. From across

  the tracks, a man (here,

  imagination does the work

  history’s lost) approaches, finger

  bared, a blunt accusation.

  Aren’t you a Jap? The long

  explanation—why she’s out,

  whose s
ide she’s on.

  The nations we pledge

  at odds, leaving us to make

  up the difference.

  This story’s old, the woman

  —dead, papers boxed

  in a back closet. I’ve seen them.

  Early Release.

  The government-issued ID number.

  In camp, it’s said, they cut

  gardens into Arkansas desert,

  fixed rocks into the flat face

  of the earth and irrigated

  bean rows to feed their families.

  Healthy vines appeared

  where none should have

  grown; tiny buds coaxed

  from the earth, tendrils

  that spooled runners

  through dust.

  When the order came

  to pack up and return

  home, the authorities found

  every curtain drawn

  shut. Every barrack

  floor swept clean.

  Mia Ayumi Malhotra

  Domesticity

  In Chinese, the word country is half

  the word home: 家. Written before a name,

  家 also means domesticized, as in daughter

  whittling her ribs into toothpicks.

  Daughter breaking clean

  as a bowl. I grow full on

  steam. I eat through all my leashes, swallow

  a sky twice my size. I gather rust

  between my fingers, my girlhood

  grown out of. In this country, I choose

  between living like an animal or dying

  like one. Be the tongueless dog or the hunger

  it was rescued from. There is nothing alive

  about me. I prove it with a passport

  photo of my birth: my mother unknotting

  me from a length of rope. Someday

  a child will slip out of my body

  like a neck from a noose. Motherhood

  an attempt at my own life. I envy birds

  who fly domestic, their bodies

  native to the same sky. Our wings

  are alien, attached backwards, angled

  wounds. Instead of flight, we learned

  butchery. How best to eat from

  our injuries. We blow on our cuts

  like cooling soup. Serve me

  in a corset, a country waisting me

  so thin I double as a blade. My birth

  certificate an x-ray. The doctor

  counts my bones, naming each

  a way he can break me. There is nothing

  meat about me. I am all joint, all

  hinge. My body opens

  no doors. To enter a country, leave

  me behind. Water your garden

  with gunshot. What grows is a woman

  stemless, seedless. I am always ready

  for bite, for arrow. I am always ready

  to run. How else does an animal

  learn distance

  as dying. How else do I

  learn home

  is my hunter.

  Kristin Chang

  The Poet at Fifteen

  after Larry Levis

  You wear faded black

  and paint your face white as the blessed

  teeth of Jesus

  because brown isn’t high art

  unless you are a beautiful savage.

  All the useless tautologies—

  This is me. I am this. I am me.

  In your ragged

  Salvation Army sweaters, in your brilliant

  awkwardness. White dresses

  like Emily Dickinson.

  I dreaded that first Robin,

  so, at fifteen you slash

  your wrists.

  You’re not allowed

  to shave your legs in the hospital.

  The atmosphere

  that year: sometimes you exist

  and sometimes you think you’re Mrs. Dalloway.

  This is bold—existing.

  You do not understand your parents

  who understand you less:

  your father who listens to ABBA after work,

  your mother who eats expired food.

  How do you explain what you have done?

  With your hybrid mouth, a split tongue.

  How do you explain the warmth

  sucking you open, leaving you

  like a gutted machine?

  It is a luxury to tell a story.

  How do you explain

  that the words are made by more

  than your wanting?

  Te chingas o te jodes.

  At times when you speak Spanish, your tongue

  is flaccid inside your rotten mouth:

  disgraciada, sin vergüenza.

  At the hospital they’re calling your name

  with an accent on the E. They bring you

  tacos, a tiny golden crucifix.

  Your father has run

  all the way from the factory.

  Erika L. Sánchez

  Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

  Ocean, don’t be afraid.

  The end of the road is so far ahead

  it is already behind us.

  Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

  until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

  won’t remember its wings

  no matter how many times our knees

  kiss the pavement. Ocean,

  are you listening? The most beautiful part

  of your body is wherever

  your mother’s shadow falls.

  Here’s the house with childhood

  whittled down to a single red trip wire.

  Don’t worry. Just call it horizon

  & you’ll never reach it.

  Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not

  a lifeboat. Here’s the man

  whose arms are wide enough to gather

  your leaving. & here the moment,

  just after the lights go out, when you can still see

  the faint torch between his legs.

  How you use it again & again

  to find your own hands.

  You asked for a second chance

  & are given a mouth to empty out of.

  Don’t be afraid, the gunfire

  is only the sound of people

  trying to live a little longer

  & failing. Ocean. Ocean—

  get up. The most beautiful part of your body

  is where it’s headed. & remember,

  loneliness is still time spent

  with the world. Here’s

  the room with everyone in it.

  Your dead friends passing

  through you like wind

  through a wind chime. Here’s a desk

  with the gimp leg & a brick

  to make it last. Yes, here’s a room

  so warm & blood-close,

  I swear, you will wake—

  & mistake these walls

  for skin.

  Ocean Vuong

  ode to the first white girl i ever loved

  it was kindergarten

  & i did not know english

  so i could not talk

  without being ridiculed

  & the teacher did not want me in her class

  she was white, too

  she said i do not know

  how to teach someone

  who only speaks spanish

  & the kids did not want me in their class

  they were white, too

  they said we do not know

  how to be friends with someone

  who only speaks spanish

  & i was the only Mexican

  & i only spoke spanish

  i watched a lot of tv

  & everyone was rich & white

  my family was poor & Mexican

  my family only spoke spanish

  & in school i felt so lonely

  my loneliness would walk home with me

  my l
oneliness held my hand as i crossed streets

  my loneliness spoke spanish like my family

  & this is how i learned to equate

  my family with loneliness

  how i learned to hate my family

  how i learned to hate being Mexican

  & i watched a lot of tv

  & everyone was rich & white

  & what i wanted was to grow up

  & be rich & white & speak english

  on shows like Seinfeld or Friends

  on shows with laughtracks, big hair, & cardigans

  & what i wanted was friends

  to walk home from school with me

  & what i wanted was a teacher

  to give me gold stars like the other kids

  & what i wanted was to stop eating welfare nachos

  with government cheese

  & it was kindergarten

  & i loved all the white girls in my class

  Robin & Crystal & Jen & all of the white girls

  whose names i’ve forgotten

  i wanted to kiss them

  i thought kisses were magic

  & i hoped i could learn english through a kiss

  that i could run my hands through their hair

  & find a proper accent

  i loved white girls

  as much as i hated

  being lonely & Mexican

  lord, i am a 25 year old man

  & sometimes still a 5 year old boy

  & i love black women & latina women

  & i tell them in spanish

  how beautiful they are

  & they are more beautiful & lovely

  than all the white women in the world

  i tell them in spanish

  how lonely it is to live in english

  & they answer with a remix of my name

  yo se, yo se, yo se

  José Olivarez

  Talks about Race

  I have dark skin, dark face, and darkened eyes—

  the white resides only outside the pupil.

  I don’t know how to think of this—

  I wasn’t taught to notice one’s colors;

  under the sun, everyone’s skin bounces streaks of light.

  Which do I claim? It is difficult to explain

  the difference between African & African American

  the details escape me, thin paper folding the involucre of a burning fire.

  I am “other”; it is such

  an indistinguishable form, beyond the construct of the proper self.

  Sometimes I am asked

  if I am Indian, Middle Eastern, or Biracial;

  I don’t know what to say to these people

  who notice the shape of the eye before its depth

 

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