Paul Yee fonds, City of Vancouver Archives
One is a mirror number
Reflecting tender eyes
Looking to a better future
Sailing starry skies
Wisdom-worn hands
Carved from a lifelong journey
What peril
I do not see
But my family
Ripped from me
Buried in papers
Dreams stamped out, a colonial fury
A cruel palimpsest
Makes in me an enemy
Tracks laid, not souls, to rest
Empty chests
Echoes of Ancestors’ footsteps
Thunderous explosions
Their spirits screaming out for justice
The tang of bone on metal
Singing a requiem
A voyage home lost
Generations of unrest
Left to pick up the pieces
Tin cans
Second class citizens
Sixty-two years
This many-headed spectre still yens
Men marred by ink
Shuffled into Bachelor Alley
Question existence
Found at the end of a rope
A candle snuffed out
Racist not jests
Hot off the press
Hate a virulent virus
Stoking fires and riots
Paranoia propaganda
Uncivil hypocrisy washing away democracy
Barred from education, economic equity
Leafy greens, earthy herbs, orange tangerines
Hot buns steaming
One-Thirty-Six a Force for the votes
No surrender to nonsensical tropes
Vivian Jung swimming through barriers
A swell, a fervor united
Doctors launder stains
Of false leaders
Spinning lies
Political agenda
Round and round lazy Susans
The finest of China
Worked to the bone
For sense less than a dollar
Heavily taxed but can’t order a coffee
Oh-seven, oh-one, nineteen twenty-three
A celebration undone, humiliation
A history of exclusion,
Recognition of a misrepresentation,
One is a mirror number
A truth-teller,
Reflecting heroes overcoming foes
Born of hope and resilience
Born in Shanghai, China, Jaylee Hamidi (They/She) is a queer, Chinese-Kurdish-Iranian actress, writer, and creative. Showcasing the nuances of intersectionality is the touchstone of their work. Their artistry reflects the beauty in multidimensionality, of the light and dark in characters that they play, and in the poems and stories they write.