Chinese Dream 11, and: Chinese Dream 12, and: Chinese Dream 13

Chinese Dream 11, and: Chinese Dream 12, and: Chinese Dream 13 Timothy Yu (bio) Chinese Dream 11 My mother knows. My mother noes, but knows. Charlie Chan too had his inhuman birth, that motherless dragon’s son. Please, sir, to lie in bed you make for yourself, forever? Yes, I drawing my first breath American Chinese, born a mouth-breathing beast with love for redhead Molly, I throw up & fall down in front of her house but sir, I cannot die; while being bullied I will dream I am white— during every movie—my heart-sought bodies sealed in transparency: Elisabeth climbing her rope, winged Michelle or pale Winona burn what’s left of the dark, grown like my limbs, my tears behind thick glasses, harmless. Down the stairs tumble me, smothered by the undead. I can’t hear what I have to say. [End Page 18] Chinese Dream 12 Look at my eye, look at it slant. Sight balks, laughter winds round my ear. The fake pagoda where Mulan sings constricts my bowels; then loosens them. Timothy’s silent. Could Timothy Thing turn real boy, from fear? Sights talk. Les poissons, les poissons swim past perilous minstrel moi. The elders, Confucius Li Po Mao, speak a language I don’t know. Their words fill my mouth with drifting snow. Chinese are taking over, how ever! You’re selling. We converge on your barely-cooling corpse. What else can be eaten up? from the East our voices surge. Belle tracks her beast toward the rising sun and finds him sleeping. I’m the witch, natch. [End Page 19] Chinese Dream 13 God damn Timothy. He lived like a mouse, with two eyes scratched on his head and his mouth missing. Timothy was never forward. Wretch. He never demanded anything; in dread he trucked, when even pity was kissing. Could Timothy be a human being? I need a judgment, please. …What’s that? No way. He is a Chinese American man. Too bad. My class is faking. My pass is making. Define & punish me, & trap my play. God’s Timothy’s envy. It’s an illness…Why, what illness must be clear. A bordering. I won’t feel a thing. –Mr. Chan, when you look through crooked eye, then see self as otherly. [End Page 20] Timothy Yu Timothy Yu is the author of 100 Chinese Silences (Les Figues) and of three chapbooks: 15 Chinese Silences (Tinfish), Journey to the West (Barrow Street), and, with Kristy Odelius, Kiss the Stranger (Corollary). He is associate professor of English and director of Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Copyright © 2016 University of Wisconsin Board of Regents