by Karen Hui
my niece. blonde-brown curls and round cheeks
big(ger) eyes/pale pale (brown) skin
the neighborhood aunties comment. she’s so white!
eyes so big!/mixed children are just prettier
she is so pretty. like one of those cherubs
from raphael’s sistine madonna
faces resting in fat hands/bored demeanors/eyes rolled up
to the skies, framed above my grandparent’s bed
even she thinks she’s pretty. sometimes she
looks in the mirror and says to herself: leng leng
she’s so smart! my grandmother beams. she
recognizes her own beauty. one day i’ll tell her
you are an ocean. because you love eating rice in bone broth, because
chinese falls out of your mouth like smooth marbles, because
when your great-grandfather bounces you on his knee his ninety-two
years on this earth distill into a grain of salt. you contain the histories
of laboring women and men, their backs like rounded hills among
the peanut fields. you contain revolutions, failed and successful.
but she’s only two years old. she looks
in the mirror, she smiles. leng leng
