self portrait as chinese typewriter
my father asked me for futures / i only have the word for solitude.
by Ivan Zhao
i was once the object of my parent's desires. mechanical
texture bound cultural tapestry. for years, a theoretical
invention that could modernize. enrich. enliven.
they tried to sentence me: IBM MIT CCP. they tried
to straighten me. and so, i breathed carbon steel
of rotating drums on baby bamboo shoots, passing
radicals in my throat to savor the taste of tongues. I lose
lexicographical fluency, I need grease but china does not
want. china does not think of me. my value derives my worth.
made in america. they needed me to unite one million people.
i unclench and a character is gone. i loosen my grip
on my grandmother. my father asked me for futures
i only have the word for solitude. in the distance
passion. there is no combinations of logographs that tell
me what to do when a man pounds his fists into me. i shatter
to the floor but they keep rebuilding. each time, they expect me
to be better. I ask them, how do you fit a millennia in finite
memory? the typebar entangles. i keep puncturing the lines
until the page bleeds white.
Ivan Zhao (he/him) is a poet, designer, and web artist based in San Francisco interested in nonlinear narratives, forms, and mechanics that reckon with digital, diasporic, and queer identity. When he’s not making weird things on the internet, he’s making bread and soup in the kitchen.
