I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party by Chen Chen

I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party

 

In the invitation, I tell them for the seventeenth time 

(the fourth in writing), that I am gay.  

 

In the invitation, I include a picture of my boyfriend 

& write, You’ve met him two times. But this time,  

you will ask him things other than can you pass the

whatever. You will ask him  

about him. You will enjoy dinner. You will be 

enjoyable. Please RSVP.  

 

They RSVP. They come. 

They sit at the table & ask my boyfriend  

 

the first of the conversation starters I slip them

upon arrival: How is work going?   

 

I’m like the kid in Home Alone, orchestrating

every movement of a proper family, as if a pair   

 

of scary yet deeply incompetent burglars 

is watching from the outside.   

 

My boyfriend responds in his chipper way. 

I pass my father a bowl of fish ball soup—So comforting,  

isn’t it? My mother smiles her best 

Sitting with Her Son’s Boyfriend  

 

Who Is a Boy Smile. I smile my Hurray for Doing 

a Little Better Smile.  

 

Everyone eats soup. 

Then, my mother turns  

 

to me, whispers in Mandarin, Is he coming with you 

for Thanksgiving? My good friend is & she wouldn’t like  

this. I’m like the kid in Home Alone, pulling 

on the string that makes my cardboard mother  

 

more motherly, except she is 

not cardboard, she is  

 

already, exceedingly my mother. Waiting 

for my answer.  

 

While my father opens up 

a Boston Globe, when the invitation  

 

clearly stated: No security 

blankets. I’m like the kid  

 

in Home Alone, except the home 

is my apartment, & I’m much older, & not alone,  

 

& not the one who needs 

to learn, has to—Remind me  

what’s in that recipe again, my boyfriend says 

to my mother, as though they have always, easily  

 

talked. As though no one has told him 

many times, what a nonlinear slapstick meets  

 

slasher flick meets psychological 

pit he is now co-starring in.  

 

Remind me, he says 

to our family.