Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
This month, Asian Fortune is launching its poetry series – a space for local APA poets to share their art, stories, and moments. We encourage all APA poets in the D.C. metropolitan area to submit their work. More information on monthly themes, eligibility guidelines, and prompts can be found on our website: http://www.asianfortunenews.com/poetry-submissions/ Happy writing!
A Good Cookie
Every Sunday morning,
my grandpa used the top
of a baby Rubbermaid container
as a cookie cutter, so that each
piece was stamped on the corner
with a R in a circle,
registered trademark,
an unintended decoration
I grew to love.
The ingredients were simple,
eggs, flour, a spoonful of sugar,
and a pinch of salt.
It wasn’t very tasty
but it provided sustenance,
went down alright
with a cup of milk
and grandpa always taught me
not to waste.
When I was little,
I used to press the dough
into the cap, pressed extra hard
over the R, so there was no mistaking
their identity. Grandpa used to tell me
how just a spoonful of sugar back then
could have saved a life,
or an entire family maybe,
during Mao’s Great Famine.
It takes two cups of sugar
and a stick of butter to
make a sugar cookie,
but if you ask me, all a good cookie needs
is the basics
and perhaps letter R
in a circle, stamped on
an unassuming corner.
—
Angeline is a Chinese-American first year medical student at the University of Maryland – Baltimore. She recently graduated from the University of Maryland College Park with a double degree in Neurobiology and English and a minor in Asian American studies. She enjoys writing poetry and singing in her spare time.
A Single Flower
There is a curious discomfort
At sitting in comfortable chairs
In well-lit halls, with generic background noise
And listening to the tales of horrors past
Not in the form of history lessons
Which are history, and left behind in the past
Contrary to whatever Faulkner may have said
And Woody Allen may have meant
But in the study of the law
The law, which is a continuous stream
Like Eliot’s rose-garden
And has accumulated debris and wreckage
Of centuries of malice
Prejudice, contempt, and cowardice
The words of men long dead
Crouching in tomes like venomous cobras
Sinking their fangs on the unwary
Dispossess them, disenfranchise them
Forcibly remove them
Don’t let them reproduce further
Don’t let them enter our shores and poison our culture
When law is an ornament to power
It ceases to be law
And becomes an afterthought
Cleaning the mess? What about
your own prejudices, the new hatred
and intolerance
that you now bring to the table?
No Pierian Spring to automatically
cleanse your soul and purify your thoughts
With apology to the student in the future
The effort is made
If a single flower blooms
The world is a better place
—
Shamul is a native of Bangladesh, currently employed in the federal government, and resides in the DC Metro area.
