WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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If you aren't laughing,
you are crying.

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If the silence doesn't scratch
you, come a little closer.

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Timothy Yu dares us all to laugh
a little closer to the truth

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of writing through erasure.

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In more specific terms,
the color of our skin,

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as Orientalism backdrop,
racist acrobatics.

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Ezra Pound, Jeb Bush,
a hand over our mouths.

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The hand of Billy Collins
crooning, Buddha, Buddha,

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Buddha.

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Timothy writes into
that punch line.

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Dear Timothy, you've given us
100 names for all this anger

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and paralysis.

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But more importantly,
perhaps, another path

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to break us through that
careless grinning canon.

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Dear Timothy, I read you as the
suitor to my Asia Americana,

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Cana, beat.

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I read you as a brother, beat.

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Brother Yu, I quote from your
poem ''Chinese Silence Number

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75''.

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Here the poems
begin, images wink.

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Familiar forms and
whitewashed wisdom,

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fragments have been
hammered back in place,

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ellipses nailed together again.

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Brother Yu, I quote from your
book Race and the Avant Garde.

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As the discourse of
nation falls away,

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others emerge to take its place.

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Timothy Yu, I stand
here as a testament

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to what your work has given me.

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A mighty, rooted, joyful place
that carries all our voices.

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We are so much more than mother
tongues, diaspora, and silence.

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Silence.

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Silence.

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We are many.

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And come from everything.

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Dear Timothy, this
is your song, if not

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a love letter to your
poems winking back at me.

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Dear brother, welcome home.

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[APPLAUSE]