"Resistance and Reflection" by Perrin Clore Duncan
At Ten, My Father Wins an Eating Contest by Dorothy Chan
I’m a grown ass woman,
but my father still scolds me
when I don’t finish my whole
bowl of rice at dinner, and Dad,
I’ll never be that good little
Chinese daughter of your dreams,
with the world’s softest voice
and a wardrobe filled with floral
dresses and ladylike silhouettes,
and yes, I flash people in my short
skirts and crop tops, and I hate
wearing a whole lot of clothes,
because it’s the child within,
and I’ll never be that good little
Chinese daughter of your dreams,
or what you call a “love girl,”
because you forgot the “-ly”
of “lovely,” but that’s okay,
because we should all love
our girls and I know you love me
just the way I am, but you hate
when I leave even one grain
of rice in the bowl, because
I was raised on rice, but you craved
rice as a boy with nothing to eat
that you chowed down eight bowls
in an eating contest back
in Hong Kong in the sixties,
climbing down your window
one day, saying goodbye to your
pet goose—you ran down the road
and into a circus tent, and I know
all this sounds like a movie,
and I know that everyone, everyone
thinks their father in his boyhood
is a movie character, but my father,
the almost-orphan-boy sat in a row
with seven other boys that day
eating and eating and eating,
because it’s called a free meal
when you grow up poor, used to
eating three-day-old bread,
and of course, you won, Dad,
of course, you did, and I’ll always
love your stories of Nathan Road,
quiet on Christmas Eve,
and you’d catch a movie all alone,
your Kowloon of yesteryear,
and Dad, I’ll never, never
be that good little Chinese daughter
of your dreams, and I’m a grown
ass woman, but you’re right,
I really should be finishing
my whole bowl of rice right now.
but my father still scolds me
when I don’t finish my whole
bowl of rice at dinner, and Dad,
I’ll never be that good little
Chinese daughter of your dreams,
with the world’s softest voice
and a wardrobe filled with floral
dresses and ladylike silhouettes,
and yes, I flash people in my short
skirts and crop tops, and I hate
wearing a whole lot of clothes,
because it’s the child within,
and I’ll never be that good little
Chinese daughter of your dreams,
or what you call a “love girl,”
because you forgot the “-ly”
of “lovely,” but that’s okay,
because we should all love
our girls and I know you love me
just the way I am, but you hate
when I leave even one grain
of rice in the bowl, because
I was raised on rice, but you craved
rice as a boy with nothing to eat
that you chowed down eight bowls
in an eating contest back
in Hong Kong in the sixties,
climbing down your window
one day, saying goodbye to your
pet goose—you ran down the road
and into a circus tent, and I know
all this sounds like a movie,
and I know that everyone, everyone
thinks their father in his boyhood
is a movie character, but my father,
the almost-orphan-boy sat in a row
with seven other boys that day
eating and eating and eating,
because it’s called a free meal
when you grow up poor, used to
eating three-day-old bread,
and of course, you won, Dad,
of course, you did, and I’ll always
love your stories of Nathan Road,
quiet on Christmas Eve,
and you’d catch a movie all alone,
your Kowloon of yesteryear,
and Dad, I’ll never, never
be that good little Chinese daughter
of your dreams, and I’m a grown
ass woman, but you’re right,
I really should be finishing
my whole bowl of rice right now.
Dorothy Chan is the author of Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018) and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). She was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The Cincinnati Review, The Common, Diode Poetry Journal, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. Chan is the Editor of The Southeast Review. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com.
Perrin Clore Duncan, from Oklahoma, graduated from DePauw University in May 2017 with a B.A. in Economics and Studio Art. Her work has been shown and published in Ireland, the United States, and worldwide through online publications. Perrin currently pursues her M.F.A. at the Burren College of Art in Ireland.
Visit her on instagram at @perrincloreduncan.art or at her WEBSITE.
Visit her on instagram at @perrincloreduncan.art or at her WEBSITE.
