American Inquisition
Where are you really from?
My face, made in a country
that murdered its memory,
is difficult to place here,
in this land of footnoted atrocities,
this field of disposable bodies feeding proxy wars.
I've risen out of an unfathomable death toll
to be a story that spices up any dinner party.
An honest-to-goodness, real-life American dream
recurring right before your very eyes.
Let me guess:
I should know
there is not a racist bone in your body.
No harm intended. I mean,
what proof of harm could I show?
Who has spit in my face?
Who has stopped me in my tracks?
I myself cannot distinguish
anyone's features:
Not the man who muses
over how I speak English so well.
Nor the retail employee who won’t pick up
the weight of my father’s accent.
Not the panhandler who assumes
I won’t spare a dollar,
nor the people who think I’m the nanny,
the nannies who think so too.
I would do them no justice.
After all,
who can be blamed
for being a product of the times
no one claims as their own?
Everyone just living the life
they've been afforded.
What else would be reaped
from cultivated ignorance
but this murky innocence?
My face, made in a country
that murdered its memory,
is difficult to place here,
in this land of footnoted atrocities,
this field of disposable bodies feeding proxy wars.
I've risen out of an unfathomable death toll
to be a story that spices up any dinner party.
An honest-to-goodness, real-life American dream
recurring right before your very eyes.
Let me guess:
I should know
there is not a racist bone in your body.
No harm intended. I mean,
what proof of harm could I show?
Who has spit in my face?
Who has stopped me in my tracks?
I myself cannot distinguish
anyone's features:
Not the man who muses
over how I speak English so well.
Nor the retail employee who won’t pick up
the weight of my father’s accent.
Not the panhandler who assumes
I won’t spare a dollar,
nor the people who think I’m the nanny,
the nannies who think so too.
I would do them no justice.
After all,
who can be blamed
for being a product of the times
no one claims as their own?
Everyone just living the life
they've been afforded.
What else would be reaped
from cultivated ignorance
but this murky innocence?
Pichchenda Bao is a Cambodian American writer and poet, infant survivor of the Khmer Rouge regime, daughter of refugees, and feminist stay-at-home mother in New York City. Her work has been published by great weather for MEDIA, the Ilanot Review, New Ohio Review, Adirondack Review, Newtown Literary, and elsewhere. Her honors include an emerging writer fellowship from Aspen Words, a grant from Queens Council on the Arts, and a poetry residency at Bethany Arts Community. She is an incoming Kundiman retreat fellow.
Art: Yuno Shiota,『イロアソビ-5』 Iroasobi Play with Colors, 185 cm × 185 cm, acrylic and oil pastel on paper, 9.19.2021