Pretty Good

“You speak pretty good for an Asian,”
is what I heard surrounded by las montañas in Montana,
the air more frigid than the glare of a jilted lover,
the snowy peaks sharp and steep like hoods.

“You speak pretty good,”
is what he actually said.
I added the extra prepositional phrase (that he implied),
but I still didn’t know where the restrooms were.

I wanted to say to him
with the vitriol of a burning cross,
that blacks and latinos,
and jews and assorted asians, for that matter,
are not the only minorities.

There are homosexuals, and the sterile,
the biology majors,
the policewomen,
the entomologists,
the yoga teachers and zookeepers
and chimney sweepers.
How many of those do you know?
We are all minorities in some form.

And that is why we congregate;
We want to be left alone,
but we don’t want to be alone
against-
the majority who doubt our abilities,
our ability to work,
to drive and to jump,
to speak.


But I will not be silenced by a stereotype.
I will speak, and I will speak well,
and I will speak loudly and use big words,
like gregarious and gesticulate
because they sound pretty good to me,
and are relevant when I speak.

So when you say to me,
“You speak pretty good [for and Asian],”
It is neither socially,
nor politically
nor grammatically
correct,
but I’ll let it slide -
since it’s technically correct,
ain’t it?