By Yuan Changming
I would paint my skin
Into a colorless color, & I would dye my hair
Wear two blue contacts, & I would even
Go for plastic surgery, but if I really do
I assure you, I will not remove my native village
Accent while speaking this foreign tongue (I began
To imitate like a frog at age nineteen); nor will I
Completely internalize the English syntax &
Aristotelian logic. No, I assure you that I’ll not give up
Watching movies or TV series, reading books
Listening to songs, each in Chinese though I hate them
For being too low & vulgar. I was born to eat dumplings
Doufu, & thus fated to always prefer to speak Mandarin
Though I write in English. I assure you that even if I am
Newly baptized in the currents of science, democracy &
Human rights, I will keep in line with my father’s
Haplogroup just as my sons do. No matter how
We identify ourselves or are identified by others, this is
What I assure you: I will never convert my proto selfhood
Into white Dataism, no, not
In the yellowish muscle of my heart
Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, the 2018 Naji Naaman’s Literary Prize, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline and 1,489 others worldwide.
Photo by Rishi Deep on Unsplash.
I love being surprised and I was surprised by: “proto selfhood into white Dataism” …especially “white Dataism” which sent a chill up my spine. Dataism is the coldest of all philosophies to me and to associate it with white also colored it racist and uncompassionate …Then the beautiful last line: “in the yellowish muscle of my heart” …it’s that “ish”, isn’t it, that makes the line curious, as if you, yourself, are unwilling to be identify with the categorizing of people into races and colors…unwilling to be, “a yellow man”. I liked that “ish” since I am suspect of all cultural and racial identities!