Read This,​

Issue 7

my open letter to you, 
and you at the front of the class, and you 
on the helpline, and you with your pen poised, 
at your cubicle, weighing my worth, my word, 
on scales, what I might add to your campus, 
your liberal arts program. This here—you, read 
my face: Fragrance of 12-point Times New 
Roman, subject and verb match in 
numerical case, harmonize in key, 
in timing, in tense; I know 
my conjugations; I will not marry 
inflection -ing to be nor mismatch 
my antecedents and plurals— 
unequally yoked. See, I am just— 
like you, polished, on this 
blank white space, marked by only me. 
No fragments will cue you nor syllables accented. 
No reason to ask, Where are you from? 
What did you say?--of my diphthongs 
and monophthongs stumbling 
over the lingual frenulum (stunted 
among the species of the slit-eyed mongoloid) 
nor restate my words, which you recognized enough 
to repeat—but in these 12-point typefaces 
divided by equidistant white space, 
I am you, and you are me. 
In grammar I dress, dazzling 
in high-heel multisyllabic vocabulary; 
no red squiggly underlines; I sashay the 
mosaic coordinations and subordinations 
of my clauses, perfectly punctuated—dependent— 
            independent 
of your come again’s. This font—my face, 
my grapholectal driving standard American: 
Try and steal 
from me this hill 
I’ve taken.

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DANIEL OOI,
​A Malaysian-Chinese immigrant, grew up Pentecostal among Buddhist-Taoist relatives. He arrived in Abilene, TX when he was 17. Daniel has worked as a substitute teacher, an adjunct instructor at the college level, and an assistant director of a TRiO program–but often dreams of being a househusband.

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