Twelve Ways of Looking at Time
in spite of Wallace Stevens
1800
among strangers in a new world,
the only comforting thing
is the embrace of your immigrant mother.
0600
1900
you are the first of three daughters,
like this household
in which there will be three immigrant mothers.
0700
2000
your immigrant mother resists the melting point.
she is a drop in the coming wave.
0700
2100
blood, sweat, and tears
show sacrifice.
blood, sweat, and tears from your immigrant mother
show sacrifice.
0900
2200
you do not know how to communicate;
the language of her home
or the language of yours,
your immigrant mother’s poetry
or her flashcard idioms.
1000
2300
poignant smells fill the kitchen
with someone else’s memories.
the childhood of your immigrant mother
appears on your dinner table.
her life
traced in the spices
an unrecognizable sadness.
1100
0000
small-minded men of this country
why do you imagine a golden race?
do you not see how the immigrant mother
builds up this nation
with the songs of her children?
1200
0100
you slip into an accent
to meet her English halfway
but you know, too,
that your immigrant mother has a homeland
where she does not have an accent.
1300
0200
when your immigrant mother flew from her country
she widened the universe
of one of many families.
1400
0300
at the sight of immigrant mothers
waiting for green cards
even the immigrants of yesterday
would cry out sharply.
1500
0400
he rode over his green lawn
in a golf cart.
once, a fear pierced him,
in that he thought he mistook
his constituency
for immigrant mothers.
1600
0500
the tides are turning.
the immigrant mothers must be rising.
1700
Hyunjin Cheo is a queer Korean poet from Vancouver. Their poetry has been published this year by the Academy of American Poets, Rutgers Review, and Rutgers Writers House Review.