For Wing Tek Lum
Out of a hat
on a piece of paper
someone once gave me your name.
Your name flew
out of my hand,
the black letters
dismantling the air
above the school.
I watched the letters
form the bird
seeds of a language
I needed to know,
a language borrowed
from the children I taught
who shivered in borrowed coats.
Toward evening they scattered
outside the school,
red-bricked and torn
on the edge of Chinatown.
I watched them disappear
into their lives,
undisciplined like starlings,
they disappeared
in the broken shoes of the wind.
One day your name
came back
in a poem you were
writing in another city,
a poem you were determined
to write for the rest of your life.
The poem a subversive act.
The poem about being Chinese,
skin the glorious color of chicken fat.
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