dubstep with chinese grandmas

yeah you / yes yes you ah ma / with your grey afro perm / with your floral shirt a size too big / for your shrunken breasts and hips / shake them shaky knees that don’t bend too well / clog your way into the rhythm / hokkien your way into history / si geena / smell of hickory smoke / smell of ash / smell of burnt offering / fingers bent and bristled / with hidden muscles / after years of wielding your wok / tips immune to burn / you’re one fireproof ah ma / let the beat drop / the prawns jump / the pork pops / meaning the party is pumping / saliva pop pop pop / as you complain / you canto cutting / sei2 yan4 / lei5 mou5 gao2 chor3 / your speech a canto / for a dj to drop the beat / as you slam your slipper on the street / sole to photo / your jade ring knuckle duster / gaudy as gangsta / damn you hit hard aunty / you are the true dubstepper with your ash hued hair / the true burning man / the way you push that trolley with the groceries / riding in the hood with your low riders / with the stanky wheel that creaks / with that hello kitty bag waving in the wind / goddamn that is the music / that preps dinner for us / preps god and guanyin and buddha for us / umbrella makes you pimpin / dragging some deadass kid for school / experience from dragging your eight deadass children and a deadass husband /sometimes with your purple and pink perm / ah ma you the first punk / and now we punks proceed / in your pumps / that are now clogs / our feet a little looser / boots and bottoms a little more unbound /

_{Crispin Rodrigues is a Singapore-based writer and educator, and is the author of four collection of poems, the latest being dragon.paper.wind (龙卷风), which explores his mixed-race identity through multilingualism and colonialism. As an educator, he teaches creative writing to high school students at a local arts school.}