Entering the Chinese-American Soap Opera 

Honolulu, Hawai'i

At first, I feel deprived, hungry for the spectacle of those extravagant Latin

American slaps,

cachetadas savory as empanadas, but then I find a similar formula applies:

lust and love impossibly intertwined, similarly convoluted plots.  Yet these soap

opera characters are plain-spoken,

honest to a fault.  A greater challenge involves following how they switch from

Chinese to English, and back:

English primarily for the office, but not always; Chinese, it seems, for close

friends, elders.   For lovers, sometimes. 

I begin to enjoy the sound of the foreign syllables heaping upon themselves, small

gems gathered in a pile.    

Setting: what appears to be a tiki bar (hibiscus behind her ear, tight coral necklace,

mixed drinks).

But back to plot.  He is attractive, deliberate when he chooses to speak to our

heroine

in Chinese: 

Yes.  Went sailing.  Didn't feel the need to tell anyone.  She turns her back to

him and stares at an ocean

viewers can only hear.   In previous scenes, workers have rushed around her

in dizzying orbits, a girlfriend has thrown up in the company bathroom, afraid she

will never measure up.

Now, all that's left is for her to walk away, unsteady, but sober, towards a blur

 

of hotel lights.  I want to take her by the hand and sit her down at a café table,

brush the hair from her eyes.  

I want to say something inadequate in a language I cannot speak.   

Michele Santamaria

MICHELE SANTAMARIA has work forthcoming in South Carolina Review and has had poems published in Snakeskin, and Lullwater Review.  A lecturer in English at Clemson University, she has also taught at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn and University of Oregon.  She has lived in three continents, but was originally born in Quito, Ecuador.