Chinese Silence No. 22

after Billy Collins, ‘Monday’



The Italians are making their pasta,

the French are making things French,

and the Chinese cultivate their silence.
They cultivate silence

in every Chinatown on the persimmon of earth–

mute below the towers of Toronto,

silently sweeping the streets of Singapore

clear of noisy self-expression.
The Americans are in their sport utility vehicles,

the Canadians are behaving reasonably,

but the Chinese remain silent

maybe with a cup of tea or an opium pipe

and maybe a finger puzzle or water torture is involved.
Or maybe the Chinese are playing the Chinese

game of ping-pong,

the pock-pock of the ball against their tight-lipped mouths

as their chefs dice scallions and bean curd.

The Chinese are silent

because it is their job for which

I pay them what they got for building the railroads.
Which silence it is hardly seems to matter

though many have a favorite

out of the 100 different kinds–

the Silence of the Well-Adjusted Minority,

the Girlish Silence of Reluctant Acquiescence,

the Silence that by No Means Should Be Mistaken for Bitterness.
By now, it should go without saying

that what Crocodile Dundee is to the Australian

and Mel Gibson is to the Scot,

so is silence to the Chinese.
Just think–

before I invented the 100 Chinese silences,

the Chinese would have had to stay indoors

and gabble about civil war and revolution

or go outside and build a really loud wall.
And when I say a wall,

I do not mean a wall of thousands of miles

that is visible from the moon.
I mean a noisy wall of language

that dwarfs my medieval battlements

and paves the Pacific to lap

California’s shores with its brick-hard words.



Chinese Silence No. 24

after David Sedaris, ‘Chicken Toenails, Anyone?’



We are all just animals

a pinch of human feces

scrambled eggs duck tongues

tentacle-like roots
What do you say

we go oriental?

And the egg rolls …

can you imagine?
They allowed you to brown bag

wads of phlegm

in the men’s room of a Beijing subway station

I looked at her thinking, You whore
I have to go to China

I’ve never looked forward to it

like twice-baked potatoes

or veal parmesan
It’s more real

I could dislike it

more authentically

than the sound of one person
then another

dredging up seeming

from the depths of my soul

using the other as a blowhole
In China something kept holding me back

the leg, the breast, etc.

hacked as if by a blind person

made entirely of organs
Yes, I must

shit in the produce aisle of a Chengdu Walmart

Yes, I must

disintegrate in the western-style toilet



Chinese Silence No. 46

after David Gilbey, ‘Intercultural Communication’



At the end of this poem my readers, true blue Aussies,

will buy me a beer at a dingy suburban pub.

Ply me with pies, burgers, and schnitzel

and charge it to the Chinese guy in the corner.
To return the favor, I will recite

my newly composed poem on Chinese silence

with its girls hiding their giggling mouths with their hands.

They call me mister. But I will change one of their vowels,

using the privilege of the international writer,

and make myself their master.
Everyone’s silent after my orientally delivered words.

What did I say? I’ll ask, my voice quiet as a girl’s.

But the joke’s on me.  My listeners’ Chinese faces

say, now let’s hear you say that in a country of women.