Triple Sonnet for My Mother’s Full-On Soap Opera Fantasy

I grew up watching soap operas

with my mother: the full-on fantasy

of white women in low-cut tops

competing over who could go the lowest

before a [  ] in jewel tones

in the middle of daytime TV,

because these are your problems

when you’re a retired movie star cougar

relocated to the tall pine suburbs

of modeling agencies and magazines

that rival Vogue, and more power to you

for dating the young con man who pursued

your daughter five episodes ago,

but hey, you were going through a divorce,

 

and that’s now worlds away in your times

of evil twins and suburban scandals

and ex-husbands rising from the dead

and brain transplants for your long-lost sister,

and onto husband number eleven,

making me reminisce on simpler times

when Liz Taylor married the construction worker,

and oh, you’re just so glamorous

in your slip dresses and your furs

and your houses straight out of HGTV

catalogs and home renovation shows.

I grew up watching soap operas

with my mother, who grew up in Hong Kong,

wanting a dream house in America

 

my father ended up designing,

complete with the proper feng shui,

because when you’re Chinese, your house is on a hill,

the other properties bowing down:

protection against lighting attacking

your trees, protection against thieves—

What’s a bigger declaration of love

than building your beloved her dream house,

because she gave birth to your daughter

at the age of twenty-five, leaving her family

in Kowloon to join you in America.

I grew up watching my mom fill notebooks

of character dialogue, to learn English—

her fantasies of American life.