Johnson Cheu
We Lived Well During the 80s
—With thanks to Ilya Kaminsky’s poem, “We Lived Happily During the War”
During the 1980s bailout and recession,
risk-averse, my father turned down
an executive position at Chrysler.
Still, we lived well during the recession.
By God’s grace, Dad remained employed at G.M.
Sheltered, shod, nourished, we were spared
our neighbors’ fate. Side-eyed, every Yellow
suddenly a “job-stealing Jap,” we also missed
the baseball bat Vincent Chin bore for every Yellow.
We lived well, dancing to Prince, Bruce, Michael,
and Madonna; the U.S.S.R. and Berlin Wall worlds away.
Lee Iacocca, you died on my birthday.
During a heated summer, I read Iacocca: An Autobiography.
Read about how you changed your name to Lee from Lido,
because Lido marked you an immigrant. Your self-imposed C.E.O.
salary a single dollar in solidarity to the employees you led.
You labored hard, yet attended faithfully
your daughters’ recitals. We lived well during the 80s,
despite demands to “Go Back To…” and spat slurs.
What would you think now, Lee of “Send Her Back”
chants, since being American-born leaves
nowhere to send us back to? Your Detroit,
your America, Lee, remain potholed, riotous.
Who will lead us back from the brink?
Johnson Cheu is the editor of four collections of scholarly essays on film, including most recently The Films of Robin Williams: Critical Essays Paperback (McFarland, 2019). His poems have appeared in Rigorous, Foliate Oak, Disability Studies Quarterly, Rattle, Ragged Edge, Atticus Review, Exposition Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other journals. Cheu is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University, and lives in East Lansing, Mich.
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