You will see me write about lanterns and dragons

no more. No more mosques or incense sticks

or insects blue and green like a mosaic floor. No more immigrant 

with a steamer-and-underwear story, or a son with a bruised cheek

ripe as a mango, or any more of that tropical nonsense.

No more faces wrapped in banana leaves or prose

that hangs onto bones and skin like prayer beads,

and for whom? We didn’t spend all those years learning

about victoria’s earhart and amelia secret

to write about firecrackers and tigermothers,

did we? Let us be frank. The electorate wants stories

spiced with italicized words, jumping out of the page

like nervous cats, backs arched like parentheses,

instinctive like an apology. I just want to write about mooncakes

the same way some write about pancakes, or breasts. I want the hot poetics of noodles

to resonate with you, the way a juicy hamburger does.  

My story is a chickadee eloping with her dove boyfriend

because malaysia cannot love me back.

My story is jaw-breaking european bread,

avocado breasts clothed in brassiere

bought at the open-air market, next to a man selling healing-rocks,

rice congee bubbling on a stovetop 

the first day of snow. My story has the woody smell of sweet valley twins

books and shattered bones mixed in the musk of sandalwood.

My story is a suitcase bound for cities full of former colonizers 

whose faces turn persimmon at the taste of paprika.

And I will show you my burlesque hips, heavy like an urn.

No wonder, I am a descendant of a people 

from the underworld.