Being pregnant is a dream

You’re pregnant?
How can that be, you dead girl
Nei thlee nui
gong mought ah?
What you talking about?
Jin hai faht moong
Truly a dream, nightmare, hah?
At your age, single for so long
What did you eat? Foo gwah, bitter melon?
You know how to wok?
Haw ooo black bean, nit du see yew
many black beans, macerated
Droplets of dark soy sauce
Yeah, yeah, ’bout time
The Vitamin A good for you
You know, thlin foo how hem
Nei ee tui lah, eat bitter then sweet
Never too late
’cause you got head full
of white hair ’cause
you send him away, ’cause
you refuse to stay married, ’cause
you wake up?
No wonder nei faht moong
No wonder nei joong yee thleh doo
want to write allaw time
bong jaw na gung nghin
help working people
Ai ya, ngow nui jin hai ngow ngow jaw lah
your head knocking ’round the ricebowl
Mought hai nah poem ah?
Shi. Shi. Hai hai lah
Okay, okay, keep dreaming
got to do something
maybe dye your hair black,
find a new cloud, Sun Wu Kong,
Monkey King there, where where
maybe asleep in stone?
But I find you, thlee nui.
Ngoi foon jaw nei
Hoo ga be be?
Pregnant?
Jin hai faht moong,
True true you dream
dream ’til you die.

Copyright © 2023 by Nellie Wong. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 26, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Jolted from sleep, I woke up. I was pregnant! But how was that possible, even in a dream or nightmare? I had never borne a child. My marriage died. And here I am, approaching my ninth decade. Perplexed, I wrote the dream down. Karen Brodine, a comrade-poet, once said, ‘When you write things down, they become true.’ Allie Light, a filmmaker, urged me to write my dreams down. The result is this poem, borne from English and Hoisan-wa, the spoken dialect of my immigrant parents and the community who migrated from southern China. Here, then, our voices live. Crossing borders, pregnant.”
—Nellie Wong