Poem Choice

Where Is My Country?

(Lights on the bridge and center stage)
Where is my country?
Where does it lie?

The 4th of July approaches
and I am asked for firecrackers.
Is it because of my skin color?
Surely not because
of my husband's name.

In these skyways
I dart in and out.
One store sells rich ice cream
and I pick bittersweet nuggets.

In the office someone asks me
to interpret Korean,
my own Cantonese netted
in steel, my own saliva.

Where is my country?
Where does it lie?

Salted in Mexico
where a policeman speaks to me in Spanish?
In a voice of a chinese grocer
who asks if I am Filipino?

Channeled in the white businessmen
who discovers that I do not sound chinese?
Garbled in a white woman
who tells me I speak perfect English?
Webbed in another
who tells me I speak with an accent?

Where is my country?
Where does it lie?

Now the dress designers flood us
with a chinese look,
quilting our bodies in satin
stitching our eyes with silk.

Where is my country?
Where does it lie?
(Lights down)

Nellie Wong

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