dragon lady
By: Helen Gu
we begin as unwanted children, executed
before opening our eyes, pleading guilty before we
hear our mothers’ voices. when a country cannot
carry all their children whole, no one wants a daughter.
in our dreams we remember the voices of the unseen,
cities of stillborn girls with still-shut eyes, girls who
never cried but say forgive me / mama / for wanting to open / my eyes / to be yours / until I belong / to someone /
wanted
…
in our world we are taught to be afraid of men,
to bear our tribal colors of silence and longing,
proud like the walks of the mothers of our mothers
watching us burdened with womanhood’s weight,
and we are taught how to clean a sauté pan
but not how to clean the burn marks on our fingers,
how to greet a man with a warm meal every day and
feed yourself with the leftovers and his dry knuckles,
stale as bread.
…
in the back of the taxi the man rests his hand on my thigh:
I’ve always wanted / to fuck / an Asian woman / like you
he mistakes my silence for submission, the fear rising
in my body and nestling in the creases of my palm.
I laugh, and sound screams for help but he does not understand
my mother tongue. if I had looked into his eyes I would see us
longing the same. him, searching for my body. me, searching for
escape. I open the door at the next red light and walk the
three miles home.
…
my grandmother told me the story of the dragon girl,
the daughter of the dragon king: once upon / a time /
there was a / wise / and / powerful / eight-year-old girl /
who was compassionate / and virtuous / so she entered
enlightenment / but they did not believe / that women /
could be enlightened / so she gave her life to Buddha /
in a pearl / and turned into a boy / and was finally /
whole
…
my mother taught me that a good woman should
never look a man in the eyes.
in America they call us dragon ladies,
as if spitting fire and charred skin is sexy. in this country
the only beautiful thing immigrants can be is a fantasy.
yellow pain turns gold when written in American,
gold that we cannot afford in a country where we
cannot even afford love.
…
their eyes, the only eyes that are allowed to see us.
their eyes, swallowing us whole when we glare back.
…
under my skin, a dragon’s body. her fire in my sinews,
her scales on my bones. her wings tucked deep in my brain
where no one can clip them away. I spit fire through her soul, beautiful fire, an inferno. under my skin, she blazes through
my veins and we make art out of a napalm-filled sky, heat
searing. we devour the words of languages that do not
love us back. we turn ashes into beautiful entities, so beautiful
that America might see us and our sparks someday.
under my skin, a dragon’s body. immured between the roots
of my thinned hairs, the faded mustard of my skin but her voice
rings like embers. in this sea of flames, we illuminate
with our hearts. my lungs filled with smoke, no longer
suffocating.
Helen Gu is a writer in California. She is a second-generation Chinese-American who is trying to find her own voice in the world through poetry. She writes about identity, grief, love, and the cosmos. She has been recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers.