by Louie Crew Clay

Foreigners Spell Sex

                  Foreigners
 
                      spell
 
                  ES EE EX
 
    when they don't want Johnny or Mary
 
                   to know,
 
                      but
 
                 we Chinese
 
              have no alphabet,
 
             have     no      easy
 
             trick      to      keep
 
           Cheung     &     Fong
 
              away           from
 
             naked          truth.
 
 
                             Even our character for intercourse pictures doors.

Learning to Steal

When I took back
     the bright red and yellow
band of feathers
     earlier traded for a piggyback ride,
Dad teased me,
     calling  me "Indian Giver!"
 
Only 12 miles away
     in what had become
a white farmer's scrubby field,
     150 years earlier
at Fort Stratha, Andy Jackson--
     who later claimed to Congress:
"Toward the aborigines no one
     Can indulge a more friendly feeling"--
plotted to steal Alabama.

Editor’s Note on Foreigners Spell Sex & Other Poems:

Foreigners Spell Sex & Other Poems is not Louie Crew Clay’s first work to appear in Eastlit. His previous published pieces are:

• East and West appeared in Eastlit July 2014.