OK, so, after a while, I did actually
run out of Billy Collins poems to parody.
So-- but what I started to discover
was that many contemporary American poets
have written poets that-- poems that thematize China in a way
very similar to these.
And in fact, after a while, I didn't even
have to find the poems myself.
People would send me emails saying,
Tim, Tim, have you seen this one?
And-- you know, because I became that guy who
parodies these poems.
So I have another stack of probably another 100 poems
that I could easily write a sequel with.
But this is "Chinese Silence Number 32"
after a poem by Alan Shapiro called "Flowerpot".
"I lie back in the sagging mattress that
holds the bell of my body like a bell unrung for 50 years
and wonder if it's still OK to call someone a Chinaman.
I guess these days, they don't all wear coolie hats
and hide their blushing faces behind bamboo fans.
But when I turn on my television,
they all still look the same, the same
as when Fu Manchu ran his long fingernails
across a white man's chest.
Someone is saying something about the balance of payments
and our national debt.
I remember when it was just the Russian bomb that scared
us and not the silent Chinaman.
I can say that, right?
Dark, empty eyes, slanting down into the void.
I fear that he will swallow me whole, my snuffling nose,
my trembling arms, my bones in the rickshaw of his gut.
And everything in the world I know
falls like a hail of missiles into the Chinaman's stomach
that will never fill."