Somehow
Dorothy Chan
   
            for Norman

You visit me in a dream, after passing,
     after I've been awaiting you for weeks,
because Chinese belief teaches us our
     loved ones will appear when we are asleep.
It's real when I enter the hotel restaurant 
    in the middle of nowhere town I live in,
as the Midwest architecture transforms
     into Kowloon at evening time. We eat 
bird's nest soup, and I remember the time
    my father ordered me this four-hundred-
year-old delicacy at Hongkong airport.
     Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you:
"Why did it take you so long?" you answer:
     "I arrived once you are strong and ready."
 
Dorothy Chan is a queer Chinese American
poet. They are the author of Return of the 
Chinese Femme (Deep vellum 2024) and 
Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Edition,
2019) and the finalist for Lambda Literary Award in
Bisexual Poetry, among others.  She's an associate 
professor at the University of Wisconsin, 
editor-in-chief and Cofounder of Honey Literary Inc.