hey you don’t be fooled by the banana
of my skin I’m one of the good ones you see
you can tell by my accent raked rootless
the shuffled mahjong tiles of my teeth
in the mailbox of envy I’m a lacquered
postcard of ease a lotus blossom baby
born to please raised in a kitchen sink
I guess you could say I know my place
by an open fire I guess you could say
my first language was guilt my first god
a white man though I could see right through
the ruthless bow of his mouth so much mercy
I only cried the first few times he made my name
sour beyond belief he was one
of the good ones you see the kind that kissed me
good night after I scrubbed out the Oriental
from behind my knees that still makes me hungry
for an America I can never quite reach
Lyn Li Che is from Malaysia. Her poems have been published or are upcoming in Indiana Review, Gulf Coast, BOAAT, Michigan Quarterly Review, Waxwing, Asian American Writers’ Workshop’s The Margins, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and others. She currently lives in New York City, where she works in tech strategy.