*NOT CHINESE

Small towns seem to duplicate themselves
As ignorance shits out ignorance
Making a franchise out of my hell.
“No, I’m not going to steal from your store!”
I want to yell to the old white lady
Eyeing me from behind the counter.
“After all…that’s what your taxes are for.”
And I know that I should let karma do its job,
But I’m not that kind of Indian anyway.
I’m the one with the feather, not the dot.
Who am I though to say what I want to say?
I’m just one of those invisible type of minorities.
At least that’s what I heard,
That’s what I’m called on network TV.

“No Ma’m I’m not Chinese.”
I tell the white waitress working at the Oriental buffet.
“But hand me some chopsticks please…
…and I’ll be on my way.”
They call me Native American now
Because India holds the real Indians.
But it turns out that I’m just what people think I am
But what I am to them doesn’t make any sense.
But no, I’m not Chinese.
Or a Mexican-Redman-crossed the Bering Strait-type of Homo sapien.
But please hand me some chopsticks,
And I’ll play along
--With these know-it-all pricks.

*Originally appeared in
Red Ink Magazine

Coypright JoelWaters 2002.

*JAPANESE GARDENS

In the Japanese gardens
I wait for the H-Bomb
to drop.
I feel like
the little trees
they have cut and trimmed
into a forced bonsai.
As fake as the bamboo
house that I sit in.
Concentrating,
like the camps
the U.S. government
put our people in.
First the Indians,
and then Japanese Americans.
Preserving cultures
by putting up a fence.
Keeping it safe from us
as though we plan
to hara-kiri.
We should be so lucky.

Stone and cement
lanterns
light the way
of a dim view.
As though to say,
“Hiroshima
was not bombed into ash.”
Like the tree
they have planted.
In the garden,
where every culture
is perfectly positioned.
An origami America
that nobody wants to unfold.


*Originally Appeared in EATING FIRE, TASTING BLOOD.
Copyright Thunder's Mouth Press 2006.