Chinese Dream 61

Cartoons. Computer-generated smiles
and fixed eyes fill my daughter’s screen, show her
form is content, content form.
She’s over unicorns. Now she plays a child
who always knows best. There’s nothing to fear
except when we near

an evening when the moon’s not giving light,
turning away. It’s late for attitude,
but it’s now that rude
words are a parent’s heritance. Is she white?
Race is something her father has, a way
of arresting play

away from her, in Timothy’s long trail
of ancestors, immigrants, grasping arms
out of elsewhere, of whom she’ll be one. The child is real.
In the bedtime story she tells herself she’s charmed,
just like her own father.