ghost from the machine

by Wendy Gao

when we came, we came with nothing but our bodies

the bodies we gave to labor and prostitution

the bodies that broke with backbreaking toil, homesickness, and aching loneliness that

seeped into the space between our bones

we stitched the country together with railroad tracks

and dynamite that exploded mountains and buried our limbs underneath

we sowed the land on hands and knees that scraped and scratched

our blood watered the earth and

fueled trains and plows like oil

still they called us machines and automatons

we stole too many jobs and made too much money

we worked too hard and too fast

they called us greedy and monstrous

said we were inhuman

as if our hearts had not shattered

and stopped beating when we left behind

our parents and homes

as if our family did not depend on what we could send home

their lives we carried on our backs

backs already heavy from bearing so much

bent from labor and bent from hardship

still they burned our homes and shot us as we turned and ran

to see if we would bleed

oil or blood

now they fear ghosts of the past will return with vengeance

to haunt their children’s children

now they whisper the rise of Asia

threatens to turn back time and undo

centuries of violence, war, imperialism, and colonization

a calamitous hysteria oozes from an anxiety of 

the Other

hemorrhages into films and images

jumps off pages and shrieks from headlines

history turned inside out, the oppressors

warn that the future is Oriental

overrun with robots and clones

the West bows to the East

Tokyo and Shanghai consume New York City and Los Angeles

the alphabet falls to glyphs and characters

as Asiatic tongues cannibalize the English language

and lick their lips with satiation

wires devour veins, and gears subsume organs

gleaming shiny metal in lieu of flesh and skin

our bodies transcend and jeopardize humanity

humanity we were never afforded

for our bodies have always been technology

not bodies but weapons and instruments

exploited and exotic

simultaneously primitive and ultramodern

a bitter pill to swallow

the metallic taste of irony

we the middlemen

caught between black and white

the third point in every triangle

made to straddle the extremes

stretched and splintered

the only middle we want but cannot claim and cannot prove

is that we are human

too