by Jared Kubokawa

 

Back home, a girl once said,

“Oh, you must eat a lot of rice then.”

And a boy at school called me,

“ornamental,” slurring the slur “oriental.”

 

Then I came to Japan to teach English, and

no one believes I’m a quarter Japanese.

 

After school, the bank teller asks,

「日本人の奥さんの苗字を名乗ったんですか?」

Did you take your Japanese wife’s name? 

I struggle to reply and show him my ringless fingers.

He scrutinizes my ID and brings the manager over.

The convenience store lady asks,

「どう白人が日本人かな?」

How can a white person be Japanese?

I mumble in broken Japanese about Grandpa

and true-to-form buy a noodle sandwich.

The bus driver asks,

「迷っていますか、外人さん?」

Are you lost, Mr. Foreigner?

“No, I’m looking for something,” I say in English.

But he just sucks his teeth and waves me away.

What I have been trying to tell them is that

I am here because my father is dead.

 

On the long bus ride to the teacher’s housing

I imagine what Dad might say to me,

“They will never see you whole.
Speak anyway, your tongue is yours.”

 

But I can’t really remember

the sound of his voice.

 

Grandpa might say:

“Do not bow too low.
You are the bridge.”

 

But the stroke left him silent,
and silence became my inheritance.

 

So instead, I write this poem to you, and ask…