Poetry: “Sandwich Shop in Rapid City, SD” by Eliana Chow

Sandwich Shop in Rapid City, SD

My Washington license plate should have given us away,
or the plastic succulent swinging from the rearview mirror,
or my white SUV like a boho bride windswept and dusty.

I don’t think the tow-headed boy had ever seen
a Chinese man in his mother’s land, sanded-down,
mind, he’d never understand the expanse of the sea.

Between tomatoes and mayonnaise that boy’s gaze flicked
from the glove-held knife to my father’s eyes and back again,
like the boat bringing FOBs back over the border.

The boy plucked pecan cookies from a plastic coffin
then severed my sandwich without washing his hands,
and I almost suffocated four hours from the Sioux.

I wanted to promise I was not really homeless, but free,
trespassing west with my Asian American Dream,
but the knife in his hands was as good as a gun to my head.

That summer, I was rejected in every white man’s journal,
and I felt bad for my poems, my children,
when I couldn’t build them a home.

About Eliana Chow

Eliana Chow is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania, currently touched down in Chicago. She received her B.A. in English writing from Wheaton College (IL) and currently works as a brand journalist and assistant editor in the higher education space. She can be found on Twitter airing her angst and anxiety and hyping up her friends' writerly accomplishments @elianachow.