Vincent Chin, You Were Living the American Dream
I.
An arm band
a Star of David set up
or a sign around your neck
to define the parameters of you
not being from Japan
not made in Japan
of not being a Nissan, a Mazda
Mitsubishi
you are not a Honda
they would not admit to the mistake
would not admit to knowing there was a difference
can you tell the difference?
Vincent, you were living the American Dream
a dream two guys who worked in a Detroit auto factory jerry rigged for you
a dream
where they chase you in front of a McDonald’s
and beat your head in
what do autoworkers who beat your head in want you to dream about?
you are not white in this dream
you are not allowed to be white
baseball bats can be white
what do baseball bats want you to dream about?
II.
Vincent, what kind of music do white autoworkers
who bludgeon you to death
listen to?
Don’t tell me they listen to Bruce Springsteen
listen to Darkness on the Edge of Town on a loop
in the tape deck of their America First pick-up truck
on the way to the factory
it’s the work just the work the working life
III.
Arrested and released the same night
driven home by his wife
what does a white autoworker who bludgeons you to death do
when he gets home? He eats dinner.
Slabs of middle America pot roast alongside boiled potatoes
and limp carrots his wife warms up
but no, of course he will call upon the Take Out gods
to allow him to order Chinese just this once
consider it his death row meal–General Tso’s Chicken
pork lo mein and too many egg rolls to count
with extra hot mustard
a feast for this prodigal son
to choke on.
(Previously published in A Temporary Dwelling, Spuyten Duyvil, 2024)
TV Streaming in the USA
Dear Motherfuckers,
Stop showing dead people
during our chicken dinner
all those arms and legs dangling
necks angling
on a hard lean
going the wrong way
don’t you know you are interfering
with our sucking of marrow
from bones?
Desire Diaspora Erasure
Swiftly accused
of being stuck in the past
for not desiring a wider societal
appreciation of my ancestral foods
but these desires are based on a discrepancy
of understanding reality from fantasy: the trap
of popularity makes everything macaroni for the masses
how easily France’s lost battle of the croissant cum cronut is forgotten.
The crossroads is where market exploitation and misinterpretation penultimately
leads to degradation of a food’s cultural touchstone for people in the diaspora.
The Korean couple who own the green market on the avenue do not stock Korean
soy sauce though Japanese brands loom large.
Is this the longtail of the ban on Koreans cooking their own food during Japanese
colonization? This is the erasure colonizers drool over: take away our cultural prowess
and we are lost.
JIWON CHOI BIO, URL, AND FOTO TK aa