on the confederate flag

on the confederate flag
by kelly zen-yie tsai

i heard the boy 
on the tv 
say it was a part 
of his culture 
that he was proud  and 
well hell, how could 
i argue with that?

he posed in front 
of  his used car in 
a dusty field and looked 
the camera straight in the eye

his sandy blonde 
hair cut sharply 
above his eyebrows

i had some cousins 
that grew up in Atlanta
and i rememeber 
that Texan Korean 
comedian from way 
back in the day named 
something like 
Henry Cho

i know that Chang & Eng, 
the first Siamese twins,
owned a plantation in North Carolina
at the turn of the century after
Ringling Brothers emancipated
them from their freakish 
celebrity-dom 

they even married 
white women and owned
slaves of their own 

whether you were 
white or black depended
on what state you lived in, 
who you were, what you did, 
what you knew.

while Chinamen 
hung from ropes 
squeezed ‘round their 
necks in California 

haven’t you ever 
heard “he doesn’t 
have a Chinamen’s 
chance before?”

i don’t know if there’s 
a Vietnamese dude in New Orleans
who tacks that criss-crossed 
craze of red, white, and blue 
next to his GuanYin, hands outstretched
offering mercy over ceramic bowls 
of incense, oranges and rice

or a Chinese kid in Houston 
bumping Paul Wall on his 
his low-rider speakers with 
two flags pasted together 
dangling from the rearview mirror: 
redwhiteblueredyellow

newly arrived to this legacy

i am nothin’ but a yankee 
yellow gurl who could never
understand why the dukes of 
hazzard painted that cross of 
stars over their side doors that 
they slid so easily in and out of 

just a yankee yellow gurl

witness to all the Chicago stories of 
Northern migration and dogbites 
taken from uncle’s legs, firemen’s 
water hoses forcing apart children’s hands, 
hand-me-down-sense impressions of 
great-grandmothers on Arkansas chicken farms 
who lived through days of slavery

i see these sewn into red black and green
emblazoned on foreheads, on wrists, on waists, 
on legs, on ankles, on feet, clutched in hands
bouncing to the beats built to tear down all walls with heat, 
to keep from ever daring to close anyone back in.

so when the boy on the tv 
talks about culture, talks about 
pride, i want to lean through the glass,
grab him ever so gently by the collar, 
and ask:

but my dear, which culture, what culture?