THE SAME

I want to tell
the little Chinese women
with the loud voices
to sit beside each other
so they don’t shout
across the car,
over my head,
shattering my space,
interrupting my reading.
I offer my seat.
The lady with the
short-cropped perm
red as a rooster’s comb
in a Chinese market
gives me a toothy grin.
An essence of onions, garlic
shakes her head
from side to side like a
tai chi exercise, no, no, no
as if to say, “I may shop in Costco
wear jeans, a North Face down jacket
but you’ll never
make me a Westerner,
won’t drop
my Chinese voice
a single decibel
to suit you and your
Anglo-silence on subway cars
as if they were chapels or
worse, private property.”
I hear my grandmother’s
staccato Calabrese vowels
clang against brick walls
in an alleyway in Queens
with the same defiance,
same pride
same sorrow to be in America