Ăn Cơm Chưa?
The sky spills a certain sadness after sunset,
a soft, incomplete light like a lamp burning mù u,
the inedible nut pounded into a fibrous pulp and drawn into a wick
when fuel shortages swept through the swamplands.
I don’t know famine, he’s an old friend of a friend.
I could get the number, but I don’t know if it’s still in service.
I’ve never lived off buttons.
Plucked off a toppled landlord’s jacket,
the buttons’ gold backings still held value
back in a time of thistle soup and pig toe porridge.
We don’t honor the dead by placing ripe fruits on their altars,
we honor them by eating the fruits before they rot, even if we’re not hungry.
How to Trick a White Person
Tell them all your butterflies have gone extinct.
It only took a single season of chemicals,
defoliants, bombings and fire raids to spoil
eggs and chrysalis, sever the life cycles
of every species native to your country.
Then lead them past blankets
stitched with depictions of butterflies in flight.
Make sure the bodies are disproportionate;
wonky wings, extra limbs, gnarly proboscis.
Explain that only the elderly remember them
and their memories are cloudy;
soup broth with too much egg yolk.
And if, when walking to their tour bus,
arms filled with scratchy butterfly blankets,
the white people see a butterfly flittering
across the parking lot, simply smile
and repeat back to them what they’ve told you:
I’m so impressed by your ability to forgive.
