Brush Made from Baby Wolf Hair
This is a traditional Chinese pen, an artifact
Combining a wolf’s wildness with a baby’s
Innocence. It is soft but strong enough to
Write dark history in rice fields, or draw
Black pictures on rice paper. All in black
And white. Unlike the feather from a swan
That can fly up from an alphabetic epic
Yes, it is a colourless feeling the writer
Or the painter gets, from his inky strokes
If the Name Is Not Right
Says Confucius, the speech
Will carry no might, or something
To this effect, but I do not care
Nor will I put up any fight
If you call me Chink, Chinaman
Oriental, Ching Chong, Dog-eater
Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan
Jeremy Lin, Yao Ming, Ling Ling
Even Jap or Gook while pulling
Your eyes back. Whatever name
You call me, my words do not
Go right, since English is no
My mother tongue, after all
We, They
We come, we see, we conquer, while
They never seek territorial expansion
We eat meat with forks and knives
They chew grass with bamboo sticks
We believe in God and obey the law
They practice Confucianism and follow their superman
We discover nuclear energy to make great bombs
They invented gunpowder to celebrate festivals
We punch others with hard fists
They dance around us with tai chi gestures
Our men fuck around everywhere outside our households
Their women lay babies right in our living rooms
We colonize every city with an English syntax
They decorate each street with Chinese signboards
We deploy aircraft carriers near their waters and coasts
They marry girls to our princes and paupers
We enjoy setting fires and blowing winds along their long walls
They have Chinese stomachs to digest all insults and injuries
We try every dirty way to overthrow their government
They sell every clean artifact to help our citizens survive
We borrow money from them to build more weapons
They toil to make more money for our banks
Them
Us
YUAN CHANGMING, nine-time Pushcart and author of seven chapbooks, started to learn English at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver. Credits include Best of Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review, and 1349 others worldwide.
