Does My Immigrant English Belong In The Canon?
Fuck the cannon that shatters my mother's tongue.
In Nicaragua a farmer explains to me: during
the Việt Nam war we stopped working each time
a plane flew by and prayed for the Vietnamese
people. When pressed my father reveals:
American bombs shrapneled
your grandmother. Ah, I thought, in the distance
between the dropping and the blast, the prayer
and the scream, between a farmer
becoming a father and a father becoming
an orphan, there was hope. Out of that hope I crawled,
a ghost child, dusky in my translation. What do ghosts
want from life? What do I know of life
but that of death?
By Phương Uyên Huỳnh Võ
Biography:
Phương Uyên Huỳnh Võ is a poet from Anaheim, California and Sài Gòn, Việt Nam. Her work has been featured in diaCritics, Acid Verse, and Loves Me Zine. She is an alumna of Roots. Wounds. Words, Kenyon Review Workshops, and Fulbright. In her free time, Phương likes to play piano, sing songs on repeat, and laugh with friends. She currently resides in Long Beach, CA, land of the Tongva and Kizh people.
No comments:
Post a Comment