WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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OK, two more poems.

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One, I'd like to read this
one for Janice Dewey's

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wonderful class.

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It's called A Portrait of
Self as Nation: 1990-1991.

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I have two pedantic epigraphs,
"fit in dominatu servitus,

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in servitute dominatus," a Latin
proverb meaning, in mastery,

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there is bondage; in
bondage, there is mastery.

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And another epigraph from George
Seferis, the modern Greek poet,

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"The stranger and the enemy, we
have seen him in the mirror."

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Let me talk a little
bit about this poem.

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It took me two years to write.

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It began as 20 pages,
but boiled down to 5.

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Meanwhile, the
Gulf War happened,

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and I incorporated
that, as well.

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[LAUGHS] It began as a dramatic
monologue in the tradition of--

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we talked about this-- an Eliot,
Browning, Frost, Shakespeare,

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so forth, but in the voice
of a ninth-century courtesan.

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I was playing with
polyphonic voices.

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Later, I hoped that the
voice blended with my own.

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Finally, I hoped to
transcend the personal voice

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with a collective,
historical voice.

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Both speaker and addressee
have multiple identities.

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The beloved is the other--

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the invader, the colonialists,
the bad guy, the reader.

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And I call this a polemical
love poem in that, in a poem,

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there's no room for the
other's point of view, right?

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Poetry is not journalism, right?

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[LAUGHTER]

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Furthermore, I believe that all
my love poems are political.

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In the Asian-American
context, love

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is one of the most powerful
forms of assimilation.

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For when one falls
in love, it is

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necessary to annihilate
parts of one's own identity,

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in order to merge with
the identity of the other.

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This is a powerful and
dangerous form of assimilation.

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A Portrait of the Self
as Nation: 1990-1991.

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Forgive me, head
master, but you see,

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I have forgotten to put on
my black lace underwear.

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And instead, I have hiked
my slip up, up to my waist,

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so that I can enjoy the breeze.

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It feels good to be without,
so good as to be salacious,

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the feeling of
flesh kissing tweed.

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If ecstasy had a color,
it would be yellow

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and pink, yellow and pink,
Mongolian skin rubbed raw.

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The serrated lining,
especially fine.

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Like wearing a hair shirt
inches above the knee.

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When was the last
time I made love?

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The last century,
with a wan missionary?

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Or was it Sun Wu the bailiff;
the tax collector who

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came for my tithes;
the herdboy, the ox,

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and the bridge of magpies?

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It was Roberto, certainly, high
on coke, circling the galaxy,

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or my recent vagabond love,
driving a reckless chariot,

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lost in my feral
country, country.

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Oh, I am so punny,
so very, very punny.

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Dear Mr. Decorum,
don't you agree?

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It's not so much the
length of the song,

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but the range of the emotions.

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Fear has kept me
a good, pink monk.

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And poetry is my nunnery.

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Here I am, alone in my altar.

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Self-hate, self-love,
both self-erotic notions.

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Eyes closed, listen to
that one hand clapping.

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Not metaphysical trance,
but fleshly mutilation.

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And loving it, myself, and
that pink womb, my bed.

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Reading Jin Ping Mei
in the "expurgated"

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where all the female
protagonists were named Lotus.

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Those damned licentious
women named us

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modest, virtue, cautious,
endearing, demure dewdrop,

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plum aster, petal stamen.

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They teach us to walk,
head bent in devotion,

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to honor the 5
relations, 10 sacraments.

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Meanwhile, the feast
is brewing elsewhere.

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The ox is slaughtered.

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And her entrails are hung on
the branches for the poor.

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They convince us, yes, our
chastity will save the nation.

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Oh, mothers, all your sweet
epithets didn't make us wise.

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Orchid by any other name
is equally seditious.

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Now where was I?

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Oh, yes, now I remember.

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The last time I made
love, it was to you.

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I faintly remember your
whiskers against my tender nape.

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You were a conquering
barbarian, helmeted, halberded,

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beneath the gauntleted moon,
whispering Hunnish or English.

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So long, Oolong,
went the racist song.

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Bye-bye, little
chinky butterfly.

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There is no cure for self-pity.

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The disease is death,
ennui, disaffection,

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a row of flesh-colored tract
homes crowding my imagination.

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I do hate my loneliness,
sitting cross-legged in my room,

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satisfied with a few off-rhymes,
sending up precious haiku

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to some inconspicuous journal
named The Left Leaning Bamboo.

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You, my precious reader, O
sweet voyeur, sweaty, balding,

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bespeckled, in a rumpled rayon
shirt and a neo-Troubadour

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chignon, politics
mildly centrist,

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the right fork for
the right occasions,

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matriculant of
the best schools--

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herewith my last
confession, with decorous

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and perfect diction,
I loathe to admit.

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Yet I shall admit it.

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There was no
colonialist coercion.

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Sadly, we blended together well.

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I was poor, starving, war-torn,
an empty coffin to be filled.

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You were a young,
ambitious lieutenant

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with dreams of becoming prince
of a new world order, lord

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of the League of Nations.

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Lover, destroyer, savior,
I remember that moment

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of beguilement, one
hand muffling my mouth,

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one hand untying my sash.

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On your throat dangled
a golden cross.

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Your god is jealous.

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Your god is cruel.

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So when did you finally return?

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And was there a second coming?

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My memory is failing me.

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Perhaps you came too late.

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We were already dead.

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Perhaps you didn't come at all.

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You had a deadline to meet,
another alliance to secure,

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another resistance to break.

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Or you came too often
to my painful dismay.

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Oh, how facile the
liberator's hand.

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Often, when I was asleep,
you would hover over me

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with your great, silent
wingspan and watch me, sadly.

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This is the way you want me--

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asleep, quiescent,
almost dead, sedated

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by lush immigrant dreams of
global bliss, connubial harmony.

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Yet I shall always
remember and deign

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to forgive long
before I am satiated,

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long before I am spent,
that last pressured

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cry, your little death.

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Under the halcyon light, you
would smoke and contemplate

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the sea and debris,
that barbaric keening

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of what it means to be free, as
if we were ever free, as if ever

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we could be.

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Said the judge, congratulations.

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On this day, 15th of November,
1967, Marilyn Mei Ling Chin,

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application ZZZZ, you
are an American citizen,

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naturalized in the name of
God the Father, God the Son,

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and the Holy Ghost.

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Time assuages, and even the
Yellow River becomes clean.

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Meanwhile, we forget
the power of exclusion,

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what you are walling
in or out, and to whom

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you must give offense.

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The hungry, the slovenly,
the convicts need not apply.

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The syphilitic, the
consumptive may not moor.

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The hookwormed and tracomaed,
and the likewise infested,

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the Gypsies, the sodomists, the
mentally infirm, the pagans,

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the heathens, the
nondenominational, the colors,

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the coloreds, the mixed
races, and the reds,

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the mutants, the communists,
the usurious, the Hibakushas,

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the hags.

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Oh, connoisseurs of
gastronomy and keemun tea.

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My foes, my loves, how
eloquent your discrimination,

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how precise your poetry.

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Last night, in our large, rotund
bed, we witnessed the fall.

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Ours was an aerial
war, bombs glittering

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in the twilight sky against
the star-spangled banner,

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dunes and dunes of sand,
fields and fields of rice,

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a thousand charred oil wells,
the firebrands of night.

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Ecstasy made us tired.

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Sir, master, dominatrix,
fall was a glorious season

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for the hegemonists.

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We took long melancholy
strolls on the beach,

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digressed on art and politics
in a quaint wharfside

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cafe in La Jolla.

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The storm grazed our
bare arms gently.

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History has never failed us.

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Why save Babylonia or Cathay
when we can always have Paris?

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Darling, if we are to remember
at all, let us remember it well.

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We were fierce yet
tender, fierce and tender.

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Thank you.

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