My most recent joints – Days 20, 16, 17, and 21 – were all created through writing exercises I’m developing for work. Today’s also came from an exercise that incorporates a reading of an excerpt of Maxine Hong Kingston’s Woman Warrior. Probably a few more in this vein to come.

Clothes and Shoes

His pipe was broken.
They blamed me, the help, so I packed my
clothes and shoes to leave on foot.
Even if I had – and I did, but they
didn’t know, so – if I had broke his pipe
or broke her mirror, or whatever
prized possessions, if I burned their robes
into smoke, or dropped their old hair
combs, grinding them into frozen stone,
so what? I never hurt them as people.
But in that moment, they made sure to keep me
underfoot. They tore my jacket on the way out,
I was nothing to them; less than that,
I was a Chinese boy – maybe sent to be
her work from God. Challenging her
to turn me civilized.

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