Choking In Chinese

Scarlet bearing cheeks
In a truth moment
Starkly bared
Breathing in waters of embarrassment
And cold curled lips
Twisting like a cynic’s mind
A moment hardly undone
While clock hands nodded
And clock heads smiled
To my groping
As my English tongue killed
The actual words it was born to speak
The bush of courtesy procreated
Between the stuttering and the confused
Staccato winds unwound
Leaving droplets of Chinese
In their faces
Where their pretend yeses
Pretend to be
And their pretend eyes telling me
“You’re freaking Chinese!”