By Juliana George
APR 18, 2024
i’m ashamed to write another diasporic poem
about cut fruit, but it’s true
i didn’t realize how much my mother loved me
until i cut into a pomegranate for the first time.
shiny red jewels bursting like boba,
my cutting board a battlefield,
shirt a virgin’s underwear,
splotch of red, sea of white
like the flag of a home i’ve been to just once
and the sour tang of your favorite,
yuriko-chan, umeboshi gohan.
i wonder how else my mother stained her fingers
to nourish me.
fruit aside,
i can recite all manner of asian american clichés—
my lips fit awkwardly around my mother tongue,
but at the counter of the japanese grocery
the cashier says hello, how are you?
the atrophied muscle is vestigial.
there is no way to say i’m proud of you
in japanese, which means my mother
selflessly learned the words in english
without the insurance of reciprocity.
i mentioned i was japanese at work
and all my co-workers could talk about
was the allure of an oriental honeymoon.
they’ve vacationed in my motherland
more than i’ve returned.
maybe i’m yellow on the outside
and white on the inside,
but i can’t be sure unless you
peel the banana, let my innards spill out
overripe like an apple too far from the tree
and tell me what color you see.
when cliché falls short, turn to fact—
there’s open gashes on foreign soil
still raw, still filling imperial reservoirs
slaking the thirst of bureaucrats
who preach the lie of post-
there’s camo-clad parasites
breeding a new race,
twice-stolen lands sharpened
into something that kills.
there’s little yellow-white girls
who look like girls, but sexier,
little yellow-white people
made in someone else’s image.
there’s a little boy who feared white devils
and a daughter who married one.
what’s more cliché than a yellow-white child?
Juliana George is the managing editor of Illume Magazine.
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