Chinese Dream 14
By Timothy Yu
Race, friends, is boring. Everyone says so.
Hashtag all lives matter, the channel turns,
we ourselves live and turn,
and moreover the TV told me yesterday
(unendingly) ‘Ever to talk about race
means you have no
Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
Inner Resources, because all I see is race.
People have race,
literature has race, especially great literature,
Henry has race, with his blacks & whites
made up as his feelings
about love & sex & art, which have race.
And our social ills, & sin, in Chinese drag
are somehow a dog
that’s eaten itself, & its tail miserably remains
as our mirror, bone or breaker, heaving
on tide: us, flag.
Timothy Yu, "Chinese Dream 14." Copyright © 2017 by Timothy Yu. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.
Source: PoetryNow (2017)