Timothy Yu

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Chinese Dream 10

You will have no gatherings.  Now we vote
that you will have no vote.  You may have a rope.
Yes.  You may have a rope.
Men take your pants down.  Dancing in the dark,
they string you up, the tune goes on.  Entertained, we gloat
& rut by yellow spark.

It is with the celebration of your quietude,
my ancient Asian, that—not your fathomless howls—
the chinky death concludes;
the rest is violence.  No enemy, you
us remind us of.  The East is rising; brood
we how like you once

we were, our gasps of self-love having made you, ready.
Wherever we hurt, you hurt worse.  You’re marked
to be jerked upward.
Ni hao!  Sir, please to keep demand steady,
no speak, look.  Confucius say work hard,
yes boss, that our Word.

 

PR4854.W39 1899

His Majesty Willie
drums black sheep
fore and aft

Child of King Lutz II
or Ralph III
860703 wee drums baa

The New York Kipling
the city Rudyard
new other I

PRO: Winkie
SCHO: Fenno
Stanford FELT

the provenance of stories
Copy signature 86-B61082
of Kipling, 1899

Coll. the drums, felt-
on fore and aft
RAL / RAL baa

blue cloth 16 cm.
D4 B000268
1 Child of 1865

1 Majesty of 1936
CSt binding Willie, 156 p.
by provenance and signature

R.F. & Company drums
860702 stories
Willie contents

the drums

 

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Timothy Yu is the author of 100 Chinese Silences (Les Figues Press).  He is the author of three chapbooks: 15 Chinese Silences (Tinfish), Journey to the West (Barrow Street), and, with Kristy Odelius, Kiss the Stranger (Corollary).  He is also the author of Race and the Avant-Garde: Experimental and Asian American Writing since 1965 (Stanford) and the editor of Nests and Strangers: On Asian American Women Poets (Kelsey Street).  He is a professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.