Smithsonian Chinese-American film archive

Richard Su

in the first scene, panoramas of Washington State 
envelope immigrant mothers into fog, a search for postage stamps
to deliver them back to their own country.
the audience realizes the lofty Rainier alpenglow gets its reds 

from disemboweling Chinese eyelids, raw fingertips stained
by paint. Oakland protestors in thick glasses, interlinking
patched jean jackets. the characters for war and violence
annotated in footnotes.

a son lives in the next shot; America, his father.
Chinese name hidden behind eraser shavings,
it’s shot out of the cul-de-sac where mothers aren’t watching

blood undone with every shot. a photographer stops 
by to anthologize a mother’s ribs mid-famine. America closes 
his shutter on her breasts. here is freedom, here is Liberty. wide-angle 
lens with pistol precision. watch railroad stitches run 

across Sunday Bests. iron nails 
in the residue of night shift aprons. sweat tastes 
like blood tastes like railroads tastes like palms 
treading water in stainless steel.

it’s funny how America raises the son and not the mother.

walk into the Emperor’s Express on 67th Street 
with inauthentic Ma Po Tofu. sons unbutton Mandarin 
syllables into ceiling fan whirring. fingers flip through 
yellowed photo albums. toward the neon lobster tank, bubbling 

onto waterlogged Confucian idioms—
dim sum receipts and immigration paperwork
stack on top of undeveloped film.

Richard Su is a 2024 American Voices Medalist, Futureverse Finalist, and Foyle Young Poet. He is the youngest graduate of the University of Iowa’s Graduate Summer Writer’s Workshop and the author of Pigboy Baptisms (Ghost City Press).