On Father’s Day, we eat crabs for dinner,
and I think about being four-years-old
dreading trips to the seafood market.
I’d hold my dad’s hand, let him protect me
from the eels popping their heads out the tank,
how I’d get ice cream with my uncle
at the same market: mango for him,
strawberry for me, and I’d hate him
for those few seconds he got his first,
how after school, Grandpa picked me up
and took me to dollar stores, flea markets,
mini markets, buying me shrimp crackers,
snowman paintings, watches that needed fixing—
This is my Chinatown, technicolor and gone.
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Contributor Notes
Dorothy Chan is the author of Chinatown Sonnets, which was selected by Douglas Kearney as the winner of New Delta Review's 6th Annual Chapbook Contest. She was a 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Plume, The Journal, Spillway, Little Patuxent Review, The McNeese Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She is the Assistant Editor of The Southeast Review. Visit her website at dorothypoetry.com
