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SECRET TO LIFE IN AMERICA
My brother sits me down and tells me
the secret to life in America.
I’m twelve years old when this happens.
He grabs my shoulders and says:
No one likes an immigrant.
It reminds them of when they fell down
and no one was around to help them.
When they couldn’t talk.
As children when they got lost in public.
Cold and wet, everyone hates an immigrant.
So don’t trust nobody.
The whites, they’ll teach you
to hate yourself for being silent.
They’ll punish you for fighting back.
They’ll love the taste of your food and culture, and sister...
and yet spit you out.
The blacks, at first you’d think they understand loss.
But to them you’re just another cracker with a bad case of
jaundice.
Don’t expect shit from them,
they can’t afford to be generous.
Latins laugh at you behind your back.
Do you know this? I’m trying to tell you
how it is in the city,
he says.
I ask my brother if I can go outside now.
No!, he screams. Our father is dead
and now I have to teach you
how to survive
in America.
Fags are everywhere.
And they want you, cuz
to them you’re exotic and cute
and will do all the dirty work.
The Chinese look down on you
for using their alphabet. The Japanese have raped
your women through the centuries
and will do it again. In fact, never
do business with other Asians,
cuz they’re the greediest people alive.
Next to Jews.
Now I’m crying, because my brother
has pulled off his work shirt.
Open your eyes!
This is where that black boy pulled the trigger
over twenty dollars and a candy bar! Here
is where the whites punctured my kidney in a parking lot outside
of Denny’s…
And the Mexicans just kept drinking their beers.
This is the bruise on my soul
where every American girl ever looked at me
like I was still the enemy.
This is where agent orange first set in.
This is where the DMZ line is still drawn!
Taste of barbed wire on my tongue!
See where that fat white teacher called me a freak
for getting a B in math! Feel
my broken immigrant’s throat
that couldn’t tell him to Fuck Off!!!
These are my yellow hands!
This is my cock!
These are my eyes wide open!
This is my heart filled with cigarette smoke!
This my aching back
which brought you here
and buried our father!
This is the cheek mother slapped
for the way that I called her
ignorant.
This is the GQ subscription sister gave me for Christmas.
Here is my blood, which tastes just like tears.
These are my dreams for the future
dead and shriveled in the corner.
This is my broom. This the face
I couldn’t save from myself.
Are you listening to any of this?
Yes, I tell him. I’m listening.
You’re lucky, he says. You’ll go to college
when you grow up.
I don’t know, I tell him.
Work your ass off and move away from this shit hole
out to the suburbs. Maybe marry
a white girl.
I don’t know, I tell him.
Go off and write... poetry.
I won’t, I say.
Yes you will. And when you do,
do me this one favor…
What, I ask.
Lie.
And make our father and me
the heroes...
you always needed us to be
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