Julio César Morales is an artist and curator at the museum here.
I don't know if he's here this evening.
Do you know him, Tyler?
Yeah.
He's an extraordinary artist and curator.
He, with another curator named Xiaoyu Weng,
organized an event called Soul Mining that featured artists
engaging with Asians throughout the Americas and specifically
Latin America.
And he included this poem, Chino, in the museum exhibit.
It started out at ASU, and then it
went to the Vincent Price Museum in Los Angeles and East LA.
"Chino"
The olla knocked with steam.
The masa cooked.
She said her eyes are china.
The vowel switched on an aura, a shine that sheens the threshold.
The vowel was spell:
An I that might we,
An I that echoes how we're seen and see.
Eyedentity.
Ay Dios, she exclaimed, surrounded by photos--
Niños y nietos--
Where I am the only chino.
How might I see through my family's eyes--
an owl's eyes in ojos
And one in its lid turned sideways 目--
I wondered with her at the table
Where we placed one olive--
ojo negro-- in each hoja,
That worn folio for field corn's field notes.
What does that dark eye in the ear's husk see?