IMMIGRANT ENGLISH PROFESSOR’S LAMENT ON ASSIMILATION
Sometimes life is so middle-class normal I write
in standard English fucking iambic pentameter
except that one word is a fucking spondee.
—from Rattle #59, Spring 2018
Tribute to Immigrant Poets
__________
Floyd Cheung: “Raised speaking Cantonese in Hong Kong, I learned English by watching Sesame Street in our house in Las Vegas, whose windows were shielded with aluminum foil to make it dark enough for my parents to sleep whenever they could between their several jobs. Now I find myself a professor of English, and I sometimes turn to poetry to meditate on how I arrived at the life I’m now living.” (web)
