The Way White People Speak
Ying Kit had seen a handful of Asian people on TV, like Connie Chung and Lucy Liu, their black hair like his sister’s, like a waterfall at night. Only, when Connie Chung spoke, she sounded like no Chinese person he knew. He pictured her voicebox as a radio she would program every morning. How hard it must’ve been at the beginning, shaping her lips to the words, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, a moving hand inside her throat.
Lisa Low was born and raised in Maryland. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Passages North, Quarterly West, Vinyl, Day One, and elsewhere. She lives in Bloomington, IN, where she recently earned her MFA in poetry at Indiana University.