a thing we all know and a thing we don’t

for the yellow girl with no home

a boat becomes a metaphor

nobody has been back since

none of us speak Cantonese anymore

the old country is gone

straight teeth are for movie stars

I’m sorry I forgot

how lucky we are

we still burn paper money

a birth mother forgets the smell of her children

a son rises in the west

ho nui, ho nui

you write the story

America swallowed the pen

we forgot how to play in the floodwater

nobody wrote down the folk songs

for the next generation

true story

sometimes I don’t want to be Chinese anymore

somebody gave away the cheung som

everybody still has the skin