Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language and violence.
It means that
When you walk into a mall with your friends
You get spat at and called names
It means that you could be going to school
Someone tells you to go back to your own country
But you know you were born here
Yet when you tell anyone you're Canadian, they ask
"No, I mean, where are you really from?"
It means that your eyes are thin as silk
And your skin is yellow as the rising sun
It means that people blame you
For the virus
It means that when you're on a date
You get told to "not tarnish the pure Whiteness" of your girlfriend
It means that you overhear your classmates say
"We should kill all of you to stop the spread of the virus"
It means that on the Subway
You see an Asian couple get harassed for
"Ruining the jobs of good, honest, White people"
But you're scared to speak up
Because Asians don't speak up
Because Asians stay quiet
Because you should just mind your own fucking business
It means that on the train ride home
You're scared that the guy standing too close
Will push you onto the tracks
It means that when you get spat at
When you get harassed and called names
When people tell you that you're a virus
The police ignore it because
"Spitting isn't a crime"
Because you're just
Another chink in the system
It means that
It means that
It means that
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,740 Reviews
I wrote this poem during COVID-19 but I never put it anywhere. All the experiences you see here are real things me or my friends witnessed/experienced. I recently read it to some friends and they loved it so I decided why not publish it somewhere?
Oof - this poem packs a punch Ches - and I am so sorry that you and your friends experienced these things. Racism has no place in this world, its abhorrent and clearly makes an impact. The poem does a great job of showing that these acts of aggression and disrespect do add up - they should not be easily dismissed. Poetry certainly has a place in the fight against racism as it gives a window to people who don't understand or don't experience it - the impact of these actions.
I don't have much substantive critiques on the form -
I liked how you ended the poem with "It means that__" repeated three times, I felt like this was a signal to the reader that the list goes on and is really "never-ending" and that much of it can't even be understood or verbalized. I think that's an impactful closure to the poem.
I didn't see any grammatical corrections (outside of Aet mentioned, I think "Subway" in this case would be lowercased).
I think that in this line... "It means that people blame you / For the virus" I personally don't feel like the line break mid-phrase is necessary here? But that would just be my preference!
Thanks for sharing your poem Ches, good to see you around YWS!
alliyah
Hi, I'm here for a mini-review. Just a heads-up, my mini-reviews definitely do not list all the things I liked about a poem, just what struck me most on first read.
So, here we go.
What I loved:
The strongest part of your poem is the ending, with your powerful repetition:
Because you're just
Another chink in the system
It means that
It means that
It means that
The 'it means that' struck me most because you had used it in a different sense earlier, so it kind of woke me up over here.
What could (maybe) be improved:
Paragraphing. I think a little whitespace, dividing it into sections, could aid clarity. OMG, what if it was like a picture poem and you made all the stanzas square to show segregation?
Anyway, great piece, I'm really sorry you had to go through that, thanks for bringing this perspective into my life! Keep writing x
I like this poem, it clearly came from a deeply personal place. I'm not going to do a very in depth critique about the themes or anything because I feel that might be inappropriate, but there are a couple things I saw to touch on.
"It means that you could be going to school" should probably have "and" at the end, to make it clear the next line isn't a separate thought.
Subway shouldn't be capitalized, this is only done when it's part of a proper noun like New York City Subway. According to wiki, there aren't any subways like that in Canada.
I might also play with the capitalization next time if I were you so that the lines have more variance and the sentence separations are clearer and don't have to be intuited without periods.
Good work! I hope things are better for you and your friends now.