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“insert stereotype”

Hannah Han

We are [glossy hair], [silky]

enough to swallow whole. We birth

[exotic], sweet guavas

overripe in our stomachs.

We breathe [I’m sorry,

please forgive me]. When you cleave

us open, we spill

acrid nail polish, long

fluorescent hours,

lemon sugar scrub. We

splinter, delicate nails

littering linoleum tile.

We dream of crawling

across your

saltwater moats,

[stealing] the gold fruits

dangling heavy

from your ancient boughs. But

you call us [Szechuan], too hot to

the tongue, unpalatable,

humid childhood summers

leaking from

our bones.

We [Fu Manchu], [Long Duk Dong],

thin braids swinging

from pale scalps,

your syllables breaking

on our [alien] tongues.

We arm ourselves with [calculators],

speak [calculus], hunger for

[1600s and 36s], [ivy lawns].

We are in an epidemic.

We [barbarians] breed

winged disease

in cages, eat your [pets]

during Thanksgiving,

fighting over ligament, gristle,

shards of bone, as you sit

slack-jawed in your white houses.

A century ago, we lived in

tenements because

[we wanted to].

We dreamed of laying our bodies

across spools of steel track

to fulfill your

manifest destiny.

We [wanted to be] [stripped

of] citizenship,

our names eroded like

limestone.

If -American is a suffix, it

does not protect us.

For us, [foreigners] = [animals],

and we will always linger

just outside

the cage.

about the writer

Hannah Han is from Los Angeles, California. She has received recognition for her writing from the National YoungArts Foundation, Bennington College, and Columbia College Chicago, and her work has been published in Quarterly West, Sine Theta, and The Jet Fuel Review, among others. Additionally, she is the co-editor-in-chief of The Stirling Spoon (thestirlingspoon.com).