Art two Chinese prostitutes my husband says.
He heard this at work today.
That is why they had $1500 in cash on hand
in addition to their passports to be stolen
earlier this August near the museum in Delap.
He heard that the prostitutes in Majuro are Chinese.
So being Chinese I better be careful,
but because I can remember
how I lived as a Chinese girl in my father’s house
in Phoenix, Arizona as his favorite plaything,
that is until my period began at thirteen.
The he dropped me like a hot potato
only to tease me mercilessly over my agony of acne
and my tiny teen breasts.
Did he mug me stealing my childhood, I wonder?
I remember my teacher long dead
rumored to know the prostitutes
in Boston’s Chinatown. She had a Chinese husband once.
My period began this morning and I feel a little blue.
Paula Yup returned to Spokane, Washington after a dozen years in the Marshall Islands. In the past forty years she has published over two hundred poems in magazine and anthologies including those put out by Outrider Press. Her first book of poetry is entitled Making a Clean Space in the Sky.