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January 15th, 2026
Poetry Contest #24 – First Place
by Katie Lin
After Anna May Wong
Your TV runs like saltwater over sore throats,
dry mouths and stillness at dinner tables, times
you and your mother window-shop California
from the inside out –
I come from a beautiful lineage, she repeats like scripture.
Your TV hums Dragon Seed from the '40s,
white actors wear China doll bobs,
their eyes lengthened with dishonest
eyeshadows, replicating features your mother
never quite finished arranging onto you.
The TV says she is a Dragon Lady, a timebomb
from other worlds, not the everyday girl
she'd rather be, sun-washed hair in blowouts,
easy as America.
On screen, Katharine Hepburn twirls asymmetrically,
her accent a collage of dialects,
awkward and boyish.
On the couch, your mother shuts her eyes,
peeling the lamplight,
longing for beauty to slice through, sizzling
but lethargic like radio waves.
TV pixels morph into jet lag, visual mistranslation,
change proportional to distance –
your landline stopped connecting to Shanghai months ago.
Your mother dances, replacing Katharine
in the film, alive amongst static.
Backlighting traces her matchstick figure,
infrareds bounce off her arms and flower
next to pale-on-pale powders
coughing through the screen.
This night is a young morning, the first time
your mother holds her own window reflection,
admires how it's refracted onto you in combinatorics,
a motion picture made of living parts.
You were always prisms next to flattened actors on TV.
Note: Anna May Wong – American actress regarded as the first Chinese-American Hollywood star.
About the Poet
Katie Lin resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States.
Read the poet's biography and Wax Poetry and Art publications
on Katie Lin's Artist Page.
Keywords: Hollywood, yellowface, mother-daughter, Anna May Wong, beauty
Next in Wax Mag #9:
All the Other Times
Poem by Lara Dal Molin
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