SIbilA – AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POETRY

Eight Vietnamese poets
Selected by Linh Dinh

Ly Doi

LY DOI was born in 1978 in Quang Nam and now lives in Ho Chi Minh City. A member of the Open Mouth group, he has been published widely on webzines and in group samizdats such as “Six-sided Circle” (2002) and “Open Mouth” (2002), and in his own samizdats, “Seven Spider Improvisations” and “Dog-eating Vegetarians” (2005). A drifter, he makes his living performing odd jobs on the sidewalks. In 2004, Ly Doi and poet Bui Chat were jailed for two days for passing out flyers at a poetry reading cancelled by the police. These two poets are featured in the chapbook, “Hornily Flap” (Rockheals Press 2006), translated by Linh Dinh.

Drilling and Cutting Concrete

must...
I will wipe out all of you [those who drill and cut concrete—you all] from the bases of walls
I will wipe out mankind and animals
I will wipe out birds and fish
I will make the wicked wobble and fall
and exterminate mankind [as well as those who drill and cut concrete] from the face of the earth...

must...
I will raise my arm and strike the traitors [and snitches]
and all the Viet settlers
I will exterminate from this place [including alley 47] all the adjacent settlers who are left behind
and obliterate the names of sanctioned publishers
I will extrerminate those who climb to the roofs to beg for aids
I will exterminate those who crawl into the ground to search for a beautiful grave [or a quiet tomb, same difference]

keep silent in my presence: Doi Ly—one who drills and cuts concrete...

and remember, I will use a lamp to search all over the Viet realm
I will punish the men,
I will insult the women
and abuse the homosexuals
those who are nonchalant like wine above dregs
they reassure themselves: since Doi Ly doesn’t dispense benefits, he will not unleash harms...
they are mistaken, in a totalitarian country
their properties will be stolen or destroyed,
their houses wrecked,
they build homes, but cannot live in them,
they grow grapes [or rice, same difference], but cannot drink the wine...

it’s near, the day of Doi Ly
the day of heart-rending screams echoing
the day of wrath
the day of despair
the day of afflictions
the day of extermination & destruction
dark & blurry day
overcast & gloomy day
the day of devouring fire...

hey, all you shameless people, gather, gather together
before you will be scattered
like rice husks blown away by the winds in a day
and look at the phone numbers on advertisements for drilling and cutting concrete
on the walls surrounding you all
that even earthquakes, or I (who can exterminate everything) cannot destroy...

Note: This piece was composed when the Viet realm was experiencing earthquakes and volcanoes [8/2005], after 3,200 years. And when a volume of poetry [without this poem] is about to come out.

from Seven Spider Improvisations

doi ly spider performs a miracle walking on water

then doi immediately made his disciples get on a boat to cross the river, while doi begged money and capital from the crowd, and ascended a mountain to pray for a poetic inspiration, poetic inspiration and topic did not come, doi stayed there alone— like a grasping idiot... and already the literary boat was several arms-length from shore, beat back by the waves, all evening long and what’s left of the night, until nearly cockcrow, doi finally stepped onto the dark surface of the water intending to cross the river, but the literary disciples saw and mistook him for an imposter and panicked, doi made a sign for them to calm down and called each disciple to abandon the boat to cross the river, one then two, then three, then countless others all entered the water... the situation occurred in an instant and no one saw it, but the disciples who were doubtful and without faith started to sink, doi pulled each one up and rubbed imaginary ointment on them, they thought of reaching the shore, of belonging to the group and having people pamper them... then the shore arrived, doi stood watching the familiar disciples with teary eyes, thanks to a miracle, for each one who made it to shore countless sank to the bottom, even those who did not doubt and were full of faith... all the surviving disciples were in shock, terrified, haughty then kowtowing: doi spider was truly an impostor—pretending to be a poem.

what defiles doi?

shortly after the crossing the river incident, doi summoned his remaining disciples and asked them: what defiles us, then [to set himself straight] answered: it’s not what goes in but out of the mouth, the mouth is fouler than any other hole on your body and mine also! these things [phrases, strings of words...] are fouling me then you and I don’t know what to do to make myself even more foul and continue... then the disciples approached and took turn answering: do you know, doi, those words can make the old-fashioned ungrammatical and lament to god; the wise guys of language grumble and scream about the absence of beauty, though the nosey and analytical fancy themselves useful... doi spider replied: among many disciples only a few can become trees and bear fruits, the rest are corpses at the river’s bottom, the rest are blind and deceived, they lead each other and roll to wherever, it doesn’t matter, how can I stop them... still uncomprehending, the disciples asked: so where can we roll to now... doi turned away from them: scram to wherever, I could care less, you idiotic and defiled, hanging out with you all, there’s a risk that my mouth will freshen and my soul will become pure.

Society 3

Footnote for the Bodhisattva at Su Thai Temple:

Today a story appeared in the City Police newspaper about some deputy minister who habitually bought sexual favors [and dispositions] from children and was condemned to death, and here we have a matter worthy of attention that happened on the execution ground:  

Since the guy was a master in wheeling and dealing [even selling out the people] he bought off the director/psychological [issues] advisor to the firing squad, to make these guys feel remorseful [as in their conscience shred into pieces] when they take out their guns to perform their duty. He also bought off the entire firing squad... the result: the hail of bullets only hit a soft [but tasty] spot and even the coup de grace, an extremely rare occurance, only glanced his skin—blood spilling all over... he pretended to faint, then fainted for real, then was revived by a waiting crew of doctors with their equipments... 

But it seemed that the sky had [blue] eyes [and a red mouth]... gloating over his complicated ploys, he grinned constantly while lying in the hospital to be treated for his light wound. Discharged, he offically laughed out loud in satisfaction, but because he was not paying attention he slipped on a banane peel, fell and hit his head on a pebble that a little girl he had bought sex from had left behind after a [gay] game of tic tac toe. This time, with no waiting crew of doctors nearby, he had to close his eyes and wait for [chilly] death but still he grinned in satisfaction because he had managed to escape his execution. Suddenly from afar echoed the voice of Mrs. Six living in a working class ghetto [someone who had nothing to do with him]:

If you must be reincarnated as a dog then be a German shepherd, a daschund or some Japanese breed... don’t be a Vietnamese dog, you’ll eat shit all day, are struck by people and even run the risk of being strung up and converted into 9 dogmeat dishes.

This entire poetic tale according to Mrs. Six is a type of third-rate sentimental film mixed with bits of fucking, ready to be rented at New Mountain [high spirit] market and shown nonstop at Su Thai temple.

THE BENEFITS OF POETRY

Poetry and Physical Beauty

Poetry is a great form of exercise. When you write poetry, it means that your muscles are active, your energy spent, your body becomes flexible, your figure slim and firm. You only need to write poetry two to three times a week, this practice is the best replacement for all other forms of daily exercises.

Writing poetry is also an excellent way to “tighten” the second circle, harden the third and invigorate the first. The stomach, buttocks and chest muscles are very active when you write poetry. According to a recent Chinese study, writing poetry combined with dancing to gentle rhythms such as Waltz, Tango and Swing.... will burn up a fair amount of calories, increase your height and juice up your sex drive...

A person who practices poetry regularly is also one with an elegant, classy appearance; and, of course, not without allure and attractiveness.

Poetry and Health

Poetry doesn’t just bring a healthy body, a slim shape but can also help you to resist and prevent many illnesses. After many stressful working hours, exhausting, you can let yourself go with the lively, transforming constructions of a Rubai, a Sonnet, a Haiku, a Sung Dynasty styled poem, a 6/8, a free verse, a post-modernism... all your tensions and stresses will be shooed away quickly.

According to researches and investigations from America, someone who practices poetry can eliminate up to 70% of illnesses such as: insomnia, obesity, arthritis, depression, migraines and even diabetes. As your body is allowed to move rhythmically to the constructions and flows of words... your blood can circulate, your nervous system can unwind.

Once you’ve become an expert poet, you will have gained much experiences to be someone with the skills to socialize, make long-term plans and be especially confident. These benefits will help you greatly in life, work and play.

Poetry and Romance

Writing poetry with all your passion is definitely an activity to help you increase your human potential for being sensitive and romantic. As you succeed in feeling a poem, chasing after its inner movements, you become more sensitive. As with nearly everyone, we all want to become more attractive to a lover or a spouse. Nothing else  will give you so many opportunities to trigger emotions, increase your attractiveness to a stranger of the opposite sex without saying a word, or do anything but spend a few minutes reading a poem together.

Poetry and Social Organization

Of course, unfortunately, writing poetry is also one of the causes of regrettable misunderstandings that can destroy your social contentment, and subvert society. The main cause is that poetry is still an oddity to many people, and on top of that there is a lack of positive knowledge of this mode of social communication among those in leadership positions all over the world.

In Vietnam, writing poetry is also spreading widely, relatively speaking. You can catch people writing poetry in many places, in the offices of the national assembly, parks, next to a lake and in locales where people gather to eat and use prostitutes. From early morning until dusk, late night and beyond. From preschool, youth, middle-age to even old age, everyone enjoys practicing poetry. A destination for those who want to participate, exchange, explore and research news about poetry in Vietnam: the various types of literature and art journals.

Poetry and Advice

Let’s all practice poetry not only out of enjoyment but also because of the many advantages and attitudes that poetry can bring.

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Lynh Bacardi

LYNH BACARDI's real name is Pham Thi Thuy Linh. Born in 1981, she lives in Ho Chi Minh City and works as a typist and a translator of children's literature. A 5th grade drop out, she has also worked as an itinerant vendor of cakes and lottery tickets. She has published poems in several leading Vietnamese literary journals and webzines. Translated into English, her works have also appeared in Tinfish and Nha Magazine.

Shrink & Stretch

today waking up speaking like an opportunistic death rim. I cry buzzingly a scrawny milk cow. missing the last grasping chance. mother sits counting money inside a jar brimming with black water. a hot line for polluted spirits. outside all living things are in mourning clothes and trampling on each other to reach heaven. I uncouth a building built with virginal blood. feigning an orgasmic moan. sunlight high above weeping inundating the streets. men who become bloodless when overburdened. the obese rain flows hotly. I'm pregnant with coins reeking a burning smell. a mother selling her flow keeping the cultural flow for her brood. needle marks wilting along with each vein. numbly I chew the cheery invoice. the ulcerated mouth teaches civilization to its children. I give birth to well-off swindlers. a tiny body running after a beer can recklessly tilting. drooling at leftover food inside the eyes. bad nerves jamming the buddha's miracles. a shivering fairy guffawing up a pack of lice. today all ideas upset the stomach. a look loaded with the code of one who defecates often. hey little girl laughing savagely a prurient pain. let's wear the voice of the opportunistic death rim. I carry your shadow into a coffin bought with a bitter tongue. headstrong words trading blows with each other. stepping on red coals I walk spellbound. budding pubic hairs dying of old age. at midnight laughs and cries grind down the city. the malnourished timid whirlwind. I sold my ass seven times the first time. pay back with a bout of love making without joy. woke up the next morning with a blood-smeared death rim. virginal blood more precious than living blood. a mother laughing baring her teeth inside a jar brimming with black water. I drape my skirt over lumpy heads encrusted with woven spider shit. now my male member festers.

10/03

Badmouthing Oneself

rubbing salt on a wound not yet encrusted. choking the overflowing source of piety. how to freeze frame perfection. I banish all erupting emotions. the ladle scornfully splatter a smooth face. sterility drifts inside consciousness. goose flesh kindling disease. I howl into the void. breed wild dogs inside the body. the bra suddenly dries up binding each vertebrae. the generational divide rotted and buried in earth. nakedly glowering demanding to be worshipped. male members lined up permanently risen. I 5 feet 5 after recovering my dignity. an intellectual hawking the equivalent of a rotten egg. two rubber sacks at face value. I stand on my head wearing a pair of three-legged pants. the microphone from the rally sprouting bristles. I tear the third pant leg. in need of a few holes to penetrate tonight. will be brainy tomorrow. the bible bleeding black blood at the head of the bed. the gospel hits the road. I rejuvenate the brain with a coat of status paint bought from the open-air market. asskicking high class. will turn into a child this evening. bound by the word "far" weighing down the neck while being carried by "mother." greedy eyes a mouthful of milk. two knees suddenly numb on the barbed wires. praying hoping to give birth to a flock of suns. like to illuminate distances with insolent laughter. I crave the smell of piss from the rat hole neighborhood. roaming around carrying a flat face. bad-mouth the past betray the present. the cock on the church's roof clucks. I shift sex. put hands together for the end of the day's prayer. tonight I gobble once more the sacrament. look for a new brand tomorrow – surely people are disgusted.

10/03

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Mien Dang

MIEN DANG was born in Da Nang in 1974, came to the US in 1989, and now lives in Florida, where she works as a manicurist. She has been partially deaf since the age of 13. Mien Dang has studied meditation with the Burmese monk Sayadaw U Silananda and the Vietnamese monk Sayadaw U Khippa. Her poems can be seen regularly in various Vietnamese print and web journals. English translations of her work have appeared in the webzines xconnect and MiPoesias.

Portrait

I know the bud will bloom
Perhaps into a girlish pink
Or the color of a salamander
Or the color of a hairy worm
Grinding a thousand leaves
To steal for itself a green color
 
How does one know that someone is longing to look at a green flower?!

Perhaps the blossom will not be whole
Missing a broken angel wing
The flower also has no perfume
But I'm longing for something else entirely
  
And he doesn't have a penis
Twisting towards me on a VERY HUMAN foot
And I also don't have a vagina
We make love with our mouths
With tongues sucking
To increase our pleasures
We clang our teeth
God has given mankind so many marvelous sensations!
If there really is an actual nervous system
We'd knock each other down to make love
Damn those illusions!

I know the bud will bloom into a mottled flower
With fake angel wings
But I solemnly wait for something else entirely

And he doesn't have a penis
Circling me on a VERY HUMAN foot
 

Dec 5, 2001

Laugh!

Abandon yourself
The window bar decanters the slanting sunlight
Shape of a creature that knows how to sulk
Urgent howls of crazy love talks
Curse in the filthiest language
Let's try to kiss each other
I borrow the soft parts of the lips
To reconstruct a ravaged face
Rotating upward the pupils
Roots like tangled lightning elongate
Reddened the cruel dawn
Doddering love's black magic
Killer pupils
Doubts then modesty
On pale pink cheeks
The skin has become musty here
In panic the river licks the bank
Joy erupts
And who are you?
I save for you grief on round breasts
How can I wait?
And what would I be?
What's repulsive hidden deep inside the uterus
I want to pierce shame into you
And what would we be?
I want to see you laugh
A trembling puppet bursting
A hand on shrunken testicles
Opening wide the flat chest
Flash frozen the self-absorbed lonely substance
To escape raggedness by stripping naked
Tickle and laugh
Laugh!

Jan 26, 2002

Naked

Him nude
Beauty flays along the length of the dirty stain
Petrified in some corner nibbling
Phosphorescent glass shards
Sweet tasting half a curse
The remaining secret part
Groaning behind clenched teeth

Him nude
Slippery inside a body oozing water
Night is pinned with a million black sesame seeds
Flitting along the fireflies
He is buried alive at the fold
I nudge it out gingerly
The green scar by chance passes through many springs

Him nude
Skin brownish yellow the color of alluvium
Pores sprouting
The life force splits the mud cakes
Naked to be reborn

Can’t Speak Yet

Extending the color of sunshine,
He touches the blue shadow of the sky.
The sharp tip of pregnancy
Seduces
A flipped jaw.
Existence drifts completely the soul,
Frothing an ape dream.
Carousing.
The subconscious warps the other side of the face.
Cruelty crowds passion into a corner,
Rams the body as the flame rises.
A short nerve
Softens the water. 
Calamity ridicules:
Let’s pierce to pieces the illusion!
Appearance bares its back whispering.
The hand not black enough for the heart of night.
Cannot speak now.
Striving for meaning at the end,
In a cattle state,
Stretched out the wet eye...

Sept 12, 2002

Seasoned

The abyss blooms tenderly in the crotch,
flips the body.
The hallucination casts a strange face the submerged pains.
I listen to a music bored into bones and marrows.
If it’s that absurd,
then be quiet in front of too many masks to morph into.

Primordial,
a red skinned sack kicking madly,
and still the scalding drop life’s endless night.
Heed the arousal both deranged and sensibly elastic:
a secret pliant stain,
the shape of a worm slipping smoothly into earth.
Vibrate the end-of-the-world thread.
Recall        a       torn   feeling.
Nods repeatedly that head,
gaze at that grinning darkness,
and memorize a poem about that little mouse.
All is intimate and forgiving,
challenging the dark
and chaos.
Blood clears a course drifts down a blind dream,
boils the pit of a girl’s soul.

From this strange hairy bush, an endless question.
From you to me, walking into an alliance
of life
and death.

If you want to kill yourself, then try to forget all blunders.
I’ll give up my self-torture
so you could be reborn as downy hair over my ears.
Fondling each vague photographic negative,
life gushes out,
beats urgently on your river banks.
Morning in the highland juts out like tiny cheeks,
clear and plump,
applauds the enthralled heart and mind.
All things on earth need to be seen, sucked and sniffed,
carefully and attentively, by the earthiest organs:
the nose of a wild dog, a milk-fed mouth, eyes of a rainy evening.
A monologue.
Look into the pit of a toilet,
sniff for your lover’s sweat,
and suck your own tongue.
Live,
experience a surprise attack and resist without tiring.
Memory of spirited life will sweep clean messy remembrances—
find the pulsing artery of the frenzy.
It appears the man is crying,
set aside the smell of a forest silently burning,
shattering sounds of a newly formed desert.
The animal instinct of spitting out whole the poison,
suddenly sadly naked...
Never tasted to the full the saltiness of salt,
a bout of sea rain on the tip of the tongue.
A rousing root spreads across the lips,
to life’s climax.
No    need          for     another      escape.
Stroke aslant the worries
from my breast
with your hand. 

Feb 17, 2005

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Nguyen Quoc Chanh

NGUYEN QUOC CHANH was born in 1958 in Bac Lieu, and now lives in Ho Chi Minh City. He is the author of four collections of poems, “Night of the Rising Sun” (1990) and “Inanimate Weather” (1997), the e-book “Coded Personal Info” (2001) and the samizdat “Hey, I'm Here” (2005). His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals The Literary Review and Filling Station, and in “Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogues” (Palgrave 2001). A selection of his poems are included in “Three Vietnamese Poets” (Tinfish 2001), translated by Linh Dinh.

Seven Untitled Poems

The sun lunges forward crossing a boundary puncturing a late sleep.
An egg hatches a sound.
I grip my own hand holding a shadow and releasing it into a glass of water. 
On the silent shore the sea of memories spares two shells odorless and empty. 

*

Evening holding back a burnt mark a pictogram the pit of an eye the sun immolated,
Evening burning the memory bank arms held in prayer the night heron calling into
space,
Night extinguished with one man left behind lunging forward turning into a
shadow...
Evening Who?  

*

Feet without lamp street without lamp the shadow is black.
Feet without lamp street with lamp black is the shadow.
Beneath two lamps two shadows both are black.

*
           
You ran contrariwise from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet, a mad
woman, a primitive egg dashed against scrap metal.
You collided then reverted to a rubbery condition a series of warped circles.
The endlessly jarring road with its bad intentioned collisions and drowned rivers.
You ran in panic from the woods onto a tidy stage then smiled and talked in a
bisexual manner.
Beneath the conceptual hammer you boldly split in two rhythmically trembling on
the resilient mattress.
You chased after a fit of excess and fell into the HIV pit.
A strange wind poured into the fire.
You a gray smoke gathering into clouds metamorphosing into a female bug like
the woman in the dunes adapting to a man robbed of freedom without his
day on the cross.
You a woman about to be stoned.

*

My eyes do not register the presence of trees animals men or even the arrogant
horizon.
Inside my eyes are only distances hierarchies dark holes black boxes zigzags and
Disquiets.

*

Daybreak frolics with the flowers the night smile disappearing on the street.
Each person a curfew face inside the clock the pendulum oscillates.
The briefest day I throw away as you save the thin pleasured body.
Daybreak swallows you in stages nibbles me to bits.

*

Tic toc tic toc
The horn beak pecks at the night drum,
Two secret revealing eyes are sliding along time’s greasy surface.
The wall displays dead holes variously connected to the inmate.  
And only the tic tac sounds remain to count the rolling aspirins.
Night flashes its cold teeth the mouth opens its precipices.
Shadows from cul-de-sacs stretch and stagnate on the brick floor.
Still the tic toc sounds pecking the dense night.
Still the rolling aspirins.

Low Pressure System

The thumb stops breathing.
There is a sound of a dropped glass.
Needles piercing the ear.

I see water gushing from hollows in the wall.
(The house’s arterie is broken.)

Water is drowning the word mouth.
A character cannot escape the death of a wet book.
Our character is tattooed: Small. Weak. Wicked. Shell.

Words stepping on each other trying to remove themselves from literariness.
They float blue on the water.
Individual corpses sink to compete with bricks and shards of glass.

The remaining fingers have headaches and runny noses.
Memory stands then sits stringing pieces of intestines around a hole.

I hear cries of a newborn.
A fish crawls out from a bloody hollow.
The woman closes her thighs and a corpse is covered up.

A laugh crawls in wiggly lines across a cheek.
Look into the thumb.
Sperms reborn in the flow of sap animating the wild grass and flowers.

After the bee season the flowers and grass are plowed up shredded and burnt.
The grass regrows and the sperms open their eyes.
(Even if the land is mortgaged joint ventured or sold to another.)

The hunt is a thousand years old.
A distance only blind eyes can perceive.
Its concentrated flavor cannot be tasted by anyone besides the moss covered
tongues of turtles.

I hear wild laughs from a circus mixed with the rhythmic prayer for the release of
the souls of many female nuns.
(They are performing a circus for another world?)

A low pressure system on the hill seeps into the body.
Termites dig up dirt inside bones.  
Nests grow from the ground to resemble artistic graves.

I carry a cemetery inside my body.
A fist missing a finger.

Marsh Dream

I

Broken fuse
From things the night oozes out eyes and all are infected.
The taunt threads on the face of criminal justice.
Escaping heat loses abilities to ejaculate.
One’s aura is glazed over with a spreading yellow film spilling onto the
demarcation line and entering the forbidden zone.
Annoying eye.
Sedimentary mouth sucks on pride a soapberry lava ceases at the border of real
and fake weathers.
Exhausted senses.
Life stops flowing.
Everything rots to pieces only the echoes of a linga and a yoni impassive statues
gloomily reverberating.

II

Broken fuse.
Things declare themselves royalties.
The faithful let down their guards.
It’s a legal opportunity for a disorderly appearance.
Order is restored by a red malice.
An inflected voice suffers rising blood pressure dreaming of nux vomica and
empty wine bottles.
The cerebrum enacted a benign female theatrical.
The hand of monopoly nudges the god-given rights of living things.
Skin color loses its reflex and the spool of the past weaves a fabric to cover holes
incapable of passing on the ambition to raise the count of air-hating insects. 
Staring eyes having lost their keys open and shut at will.
Annoying air.
Staggering mad manikins.
Each manikin hides a pig tail in Macondo (the village in One Hundred Years of
Solitude) and animal-shaped clouds jump on each other’s backs without      distinguishing between predators and preys lions rabbits cats dogs or   horses...
The human body opens up.
The pressures of surpluses and deficits ooze out beyond the range of sight and
sense.
The face of lava is not in the book of divination.
The protuberance is sharp and pliable.  
The hollow has a black hole element its shape changes according to the weather
of a half yawn.

III

Broken fuse.
Night smoothes out protuberances and fills in hollows.
Disparity aches the entire line in back of the ears throat navel tail bone groin
and an open toilet.
The savior sits.
Concepts are a constraining helmet insects catching prey by a system of
shutting tight.
Imagination and thoughts eternally nourished.
Man with a thick shadow does not hear the air breaks to clear a road to the cemetery
Look into one spot.
Staring and contemplating is to enter a train car without passengers.
Imagination thrown into a blinding interval everything rises.
A straight movement eliminates dampness and dries out the viscera.
A shadow creakily swinging a hammock.
The sound of darkness moving drenched in lubricating oil.
Kinship is declared through hastily carved bas relief where air-hating insects worship.

Gnawing epoch.
Suck marrow.
Product of cohabitation disobedient shard of instinct pressures of an offshoot forest.
A curt hand.
Memory opens its compass and a train car without passengers.
The past has extra tickets.
Centuries not transported.

IV

Broken fuse.
A fluorescent screen from a dark corner displays in wiggly lines manikins from
the century before silent films.
A vanguard manikin sticks out his slimy tongue dun colored stinking and oozing
from intermittent cracks the eternal conspiracy to infiltrate.
No images no smells no nothing.
Tipped equilibrium.
Insects compete to sing in chorus the swamp refrain.
Rain is.
Can’t duck inside.
Outside still the process of train cars carrying nothing.
Two oversized thigh bones incarcerating the desert.
Dip everything into the dish-washing tub.
Eliminate the lead.
Cover up the-system-to-prevent-fire-to-the-senses.
The past is bonfires of memory an on duty death notice.
Two overlong ditties emit a haunting melody like a prayer.
A door opens
The secret spills out onto the street.
Insects drone and crackle.
The swamp sleeps deeply.
Run, run and run...
A bottle filled with words.
Dirty.
An expressive hand over-pours the glass because rats and cockroaches have
splashed onto the wall slanting shadows and squares.
Interred bricks.
A disquieting word strikes.
Recovering viscera.
Those of the same skin color emit timelessly.

Beefsteak

Cows are really the past.
Bulls were worshipped.

They seized meadows.
They taught each other how to steer themselves towards results.
They found amusement by inventing ways to ridicule corpses.

(Dead things bred daily and took turns on the throne of the sacred object.)

The cows continue to procreate and the ring has slipped.
Worm color replaces grass color.
From a purebred worm the cows maintain a throne under the auspice of the sacred
object religion.

Eyes that can only see what’s behind.

From those eyes the cows procreate.
Also from those eyes the cows maintain the throne of the sacred object.
Also from those eyes the present has no more meadows.

The present is only cows consuming dishonest grass.

Their meat is starting to be displayed in supermarkets.
Their meat is bloodless and odorless.

They are preparing a beefsteak for an immortal deity. 

Rap Music

Hands steadily spinning.
Guarding each number for a chance to shrink into one spot.

All things peeled.
Unchanging season.

Fading paints on furniture.
Bottles and scraps of paper not becoming garbage. 
Accidents remaining at sites.
Pores not excreting.
Genitals neither generating nor receiving heat.

Population growth through test tubes.

An old monk chanting with his prayer beads on this play button.
A young embittered black man playing rap on that play button.
And on my play button a bass rhythm clogged up soggy without transmigration.
 
In the morning the Red Guard sperms are all blind.

They are bats facing the wall.
They are heads masturbating to the point of impotence.

And the squashed little guy is lying and listening to rap.

A World Of Sand

Sleep in deep pleasure. Time is many bats

Cutting the night’s darkness into irregular bits, each bit
A live rhythm to splash into the crowd

And from this crowd, another empty space
Slams down the door. The room

Swells and flexes. Shuddering on leaving a runway, opening the body—
Two sympathetic systems mix heat through the night. On the day

The hedge collapses, he dreams fearful of aging, let
The shadow flows and suddenly, all shapes

Are identical. He and blocks of monochromatic
Colors cover the wall, play the morning game

Of an imagination avoiding shapes, evicting all things from their spoken names,
A figure is dropped into a bottomless sensation... Have intercourse

With savages. With the sheep Dolly, a mountain peak capable
Of reproducing, rides another, sculpts symbols

Of debauchery, unformed, unstamped, and
Manifesting predictions of balance

In a divination book. As a prediction of imbalance, he shows
A means to survive by exposing the sadness of teeth and hair,

The sadness of sap oozing. As a stutterer
In a world crisscrossed with directives, and in a wretched

Coincidence, he became lost and found himself in a deluge.
(The seasons supplant each other, until the season of

Disintegration.) A sun ray crosses through, he hears it
Reverberating in his blood. He longs to wraps his arms

Around a cow’s neck and to frolic with children. He carries
A fresh fear, the fear of a woman imprisoned

Inside a birthmark done with menstruation, turning back
To a lost stretch of the road, counting fallen eggs on top of the vault

Of the thirtieth. A night of the alphabet, of intonations,
Of the flowering hour, of white enthusiasm. And the breasts

Of the earth are always shifting into puberty, so the well-worn roads
Will grow lush, and the body will retreat into the swamp reeds, and memory

Will detach itself from all things. Drop a thought into water
To reach a world of sand...

Revolving Stage

I

The life column twists, sucks the sea swallow into the eye. The stage spread its legs and spins. A light remaining from puberty plucks a woman from someone else’s look.
 
Mixed among the pebbles, an eye says: “Owls fly out from the vagina.” A dog runs after a bone’s caress. “Let’s keep it,” a hand reaches out.

A burning smell from last night’s dream. The morning is stuck in a calcium-deficient yawn of a mandible. A finger lets go of faith. A complicated emotion fans out. A blue fly bends down into the pit of a bottle inside the trash can of repentance.
 
I dream of a one stringed violin. The past stores up a fishy smell. The sudden death image of a bird in flight. Hundreds of terracotta masks drop. The electric fan is addicted to the wind. An old thought is remade by a set of false teeth.  

Swimming inside an intestine, a man drowning in words chase after the phrase: “Savage homes.”A crippled child from the Central region selling lottery tickets says morosely: “Mrs. Huyen goes up the Tranverse pass on a Mink motorcycle sitting behind a driver with artificial hands.” Beer bottles snap their caps and scream excitedly; 1,2,3... go. Idiocy ferments and foams.

Growing from the asshole a herd of traditional domestic animals, vines with soft thorns, climbing on a metal fence of a viscous city with a million inhabitants afflicted with night blindness. A history of shadows with no faith in words. A damp poet makes poetry with images.

A morning excercise with six breaths for one movement. On a bed Without Character, a light metal ring left behind by a little Chinese circus girl.
 
Shimmering satellite disks sending and receiving signals. From an empty bottle. From an old book. From a rotten tooth. From prayer beads. From a curse. A string of monosyllabic news tumble from the vocabulary of run-on sentences.

II

A cat catches an elephant and puts him inside a bamboo basket. Neither sadness nor happiness exist. An awakened feeling of indigestion towards a death before a chance for a haircut. Water leaks from the sense to the root of a hair of a stuffed animal standing in the Straw Warrior Square.

Night with the blue color of the weather turning into Summer. A fading woman, the seasoned face of a tropical fish having had intercourse with a 110-volt light gives birth to a dance/theater/underwater palace tune causing a funhouse effect to retarded children.
 
Two listless eyes behind an urn. Incense sticks jostling each other to play the fog game. Fireflies on a dry branch sprinkle flames on dead leaves. A snail meets disaster on the North-South rail line. The tropics scoops out a deep cave. A fistful of mildew countenances a Coke logo.    

Inside a dirty shoe, the toes breathe with difficulty. The rhythmic gas of carbon dioxide from the past smothers. A book opens, words decompose. An attentive look yields no meanings. Inside a thought: a short woman, continuously shaking bright colored rings.

In the year 2544 of the Buddhist calendar, two lizards intertwine on the stomach of the Goddess of Mercy. A kid plays with insect noises made by an organ. My child is afraid her teeth are yellowing. I gargle three times a day with Listerine. Rent is going up.

The man who collects human bones says: A Black person cannot become more black by humping up. A White person cannot become more white by arching his back. A Yellow person cannot become more yellow by doubling over. A Red person cannot become more red by going under.”

A painting renounces colors on its own but the eye at the museum still retains them. A dog from a poor household barks into the daydream of white spots on the back of a cat inside an empty house. The Blue King points his ass upwards and with his hands together dreams of cannons and cars. Female Storm 7 finishes first at Phu Tho racecourse. Huynh Phan Anh loses forever one third of a blue bill.

III

With the eyes closed every sound is white. Last night’s dream hasn’t escaped from the smell of the dirty shoe. In the valley a herder raises his artificial leg to jab into the past.

War of the genitals is replaced by a synthesized elastic. Music without windows. On the festival of death, women are inflated by bombs into enormous wombs, the sources of violent bloodlines.

A land of museums holds the deformed and the strangely alive. The crawling reptilian strength of a damp culture. And the homosexuals like to tattoo onto the regenerative organs images of bugs and venomous creatures.

Nightly news of a low pressure system, and flood, overflow the TV stations. A belief from the river’s source shatter dykes packed with pasty earth lumpy inside many heads nodding off to sleep. The ancestors are underwater. Faith and filial piety wait for emergency food. The ghosts are demanding Miliket instant noodles. The kinds of death not found in dictionaries, and life shits and pisses on concepts.

IV

Drowsy eyes waiting for sleep. There is a man hanging from the roof. A death with the beauty of a small waterfall pouring down a jagged peak. A comedy is performed by an old monkey. His image has been printed on postcards to sell to tourists.

Death has no gender. The entire body is bound with musical strings. Testimonies are taped all over the hallway. A few words clump their heads together, ancient characters hobnobbing with complicated constructions erected by absent minded individuals. The grammar of those who believe that, after a night’s sleep, they will wake up mute.

Between the green and red signals, the streets coagulate. At the intersection of Great Vietnam, a project gives its death notice. Next to a pile of broken bricks: garbage, animal carcasses and strewn humanity.

A horn shrieks. The crowd surges, screaming: “Kill! Kill! Kill!” A saxophone soloist suffers a stroke in the middle of Castaways. The stage turns 180 degrees. The MC smiles, apologizes for the technical glitch. A jazz singer sings Spring On The Steps, ass swaying, breasts heaving.

The reason for the calamity is determined by the sharp nose of a rabid dog.

Wide Open Eyes

A day of dark glasses
Detective eyes look into a crevice.

The ocean surface calm, to hear the sunken ships break apart.
Rotting bodies inside the memory of wide-open eyes.
Centuries of typhoons, the sunken ships become ghostly waves, become voices of matchsticks.
To light a candle for cold fingers.

The candle flame wipes dust off a secret smudge.
 
Only the wind knows of sea birds sinking and dissolving inside wide-open eyes.
And ships of sounds not spotted with rust.
Adventures stored inside children’s dreams.
Dreams bulging and overburdened to become sudden accidents.

A beauty only time is violent enough to indict.

And all the judges will be children.
And all will be acquitted.

A Legend

Smoke preserves the shoots.
Warmth maintains the timbres.

The seed I store inside the tropical forest’s vagina.
A woman born from a fever and two eyes not gouged out by the color yellow.
They are reminiscences soundly asleep inside a legendary skirt.

Every situation in the story has cats, rabbits and some fruits.
Aside from barks and the sounds of cats and dogs, there are also cormorants, guavas, mangoes, and a bottle of fish sauce. 

One among them said if stuck on a desert island he would only need two things: Mozart and fish sauce.

I am a bear who does not know how to perform mountain cave tricks, only lucky to survive the uprooted forest.
I was born from a tree’s hollow and my umbilical cord was cut with a potsherd and my music is that of a woodpecker.
My smell is that of the saliva of bees mating with the honey of flowers.
My road is to climb to the trifurcated crotch of a tree to be full and drunk and to ponder for a minute then letting go and falling down.

After each fall my flesh becomes elastic and expands.
After each fall my plants grow boundlessly.
After each fall my animals multiply.

I’m tattered, I’m porous, I’m smooth, I’m bitter. And I’m...

Although I’m only an uninsured seed and without wings.
In a dense moment of idle bullets, I take off and land.

In the legend I’m the survivor who has seen the head at the bottom of a jar of fermented paste.

Planting Humans

Punished, a student must fill two sheets: I won’t stir.
Punished, a student must slap himself: 56 times.
Punished, a student is forbidden to fart: for a month.
Punished, a student is banned from bleeding: during her period. 
Punished, a student must drink salt water: for being rude during morality class.
Punished, a student must swallow his report card: grades below average.
Punished, a student must sit in the toilet and sing the national anthem: for buckling his knees during the national anthem.
Punished, a student must yank a thousand itchy hairs from the Principal’s head: for scratching his head, yawning and not being able to distinguish between dinosaurs and reptiles.
Punished, a student must smear soot on his classmate’s forehead: for not helping his friend keep quiet.
Punished, a student must suck an eraser during history class: for not remembering all 800 names of our heroes.
Punished, a student must shut his eyes for a week for not memorizing the poem: Tonight Uncle Ho Doesn’t Sleep.

12 years later there’s a student who goes limp down there.
12 years later there’s a student with his left cheek puffier than his right.
12 years later there’s a student addicted to foul smells.
12 years later there’s a student with an ovariectomy.
12 years later there’s a student with a broken larynx.
12 years later there’s a student who tears every piece of paper he sees.
12 years later there’s a student who doesn’t dare to shit in a toilet.
12 years later there’s a student who yanks at everyone’s hair.
12 years later there’s a student who routinely picks rice from other people’s bowls.
12 years later there’s a student who must piss at the sight of a statue.
12 years later there’s a student who converts to islam to look for Saddam’s bones.

More than 20 years ago I was a student who could never stand straight.
Now I own an electric pole 25 meter-high although I can’t control my bladder.

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Nguyen Thi Hoang Bac

NGUYEN THI HOANG BAC was born in 1942 in Saigon, and has lived in Virginia since 1985. She is the author of four books of short stories, “Dust Glittering” (1988), “Eroded Side, Packed Side” (1997), “Pull Up the Anchor and Go” (1997) and “Spider.”

Inspired

this morning the clock          suddenly stood still
I
sometimes
inspired
also want
                        to remove all batteries from life
expansive
I stand
exposed
                        like a clock

1996

A Blade of Grass

urine sound
dripping
inside the bowl splashing
a warm shimmering liquid
                                               amber
pouring from my body
that’s right
I’m a woman
the type who urinates lower than a blade of grass
now
able to sit haughtily on a bowl
in the future I just might
get bigger and fatter
splashing like rain over
grass nudged by wind

1997

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Phan Ba Tho

PHAN BA THO was born in Da Nang in 1972, and now lives in Ho Chi Minh City. “A faded, empty organism,” he once described himself. After being unemployed for 60 months, 8 days and 4 hours, he’s now working as a lawyer. The author of the samizdats, “Vertical Movement” (2001) and “Endless Trash Pile,” his poems appear regularly in many print and web journals.

Nude Self Portrait

if only I could slip into the ground [or] run disappearing
into something, it’d be fantastic
yesterday I was stripped naked in the middle of a highway, 80,000 people
like metaphors and are unclear about motives
pity only to the small children who were present
very difficult, lecturing on how to mix a cocktail
with a handful of crooked bones / wrinkled lines
convoluted and sad + plus
the natural rudeness of the curious mob
people inspected my body / up down and sideway randomly
they saw in my armpit... yes, nothing but a forest with trees
straight, chopped down, completely burnt
with two eyes yellowed by beer froth & unbelievably horny, yesterday
I – was – stripped – naked – on – a – mat – torn
ragged & reeking a foul smell
(too many people glorify this filth)
they touched my hair / cheek nose & beckoned others
I saw a group of american soldiers, toying with their mouths
saddam’s hair gleefully
I became jealous of him / I thought, he’s truly happy
those in white coats liked to confirm the dna / because they’ve heard
to be that mad, one must eat horses’ balls 
what could they read on my body
they could become wiser than that, a little... yes, if
they’d pry my mouth open
they’d probably see a prick I’ve been sucking for a long time, big and tall, inside
Wei Hui said: this object can spin 360 degrees & should be used
once and thrown away
but I prefer Mian Mian*
[both sort of crazy and sane]
but, very importantly / the marvelous quality in her:
fuck first, pay later / love – being in debt, also good

*Wei Hui and Mian Mian are contemporary Chinese writers

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Phan Nhien Hao

PHAN NHIEN HAO was born in 1967 in Kontum, Vietnam. He immigrated to the US in 1991 and now lives in Illinois. He has a BA in Vietnamese Literature from The Teachers College of Saigon, a BA in American Literature from UCLA, and a Master in Library Science, also from UCLA. He is the author of two collections of poems, “Paradise of Paper Bells” (1998) and “Manufacturing Poetry 99-04” (2004). His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals The Literary Review, Manoa, xconnect and Filling Station, and in “Of Vietnam: Identities in Dialogues” (Palgrave 2001), and in a full-length, bilingual collection, “Night, Fish and Charlie Parker,” the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao, translated by Linh Dinh (Tupelo 2006).

Night Freedom

Geckos are frolicking in a yellow puddle
the street lamp an awakened eye
the night has buried deeply
the tedious hammering sounds of daily life
from the silence of the womb
a child is born
and the insane fellow will begin to bellow
about life floating through dangers
and humanity’s fickleness
alienated from its five fingers
then fly upward during a blessed hour
upward
the yellow moon a ripe guava
the anguishing fruit of freedom of this ebony night
will be seeded tomorrow in the East.

Night’s Dawn

Those are the invited secrets
in the middle of the night towards dawn
you tap the face of the clock with a hammer
the ceiling fan rotates beneath the moon
breathing in the smells of the city the way it was

There is another way to step out of
the blinding roars
of the poisonous night
but you rejected it
the ceiling fan and the flowers shed their petals
dawn repeats:
homicide
and a child eaten by dogs

There is another way to stop
halfway between two asphyxiations
but still you swim towards the sea
towards the secrets of the kelp.

Night, Fish and Charlie Parker

Night negotiating a plastic spoon
on a table littered with fish bones
all the illusions have been picked clean
Charlie Parker, a piece of bread not yet moldy
a black ocean and black notes
a few million years, a few small changes
at the bend in the road on the horizon
grows a strong type of tree
the black cat is in labor
gives birth to a few blue eggs.

Night in the South

A ringing phone on the carpet
a child is calling from the womb
night in the South
women open their doors to flirt
O spittle
the kind of germs belonging to wicked souls
returning to a cultured city
only to see ducks and chickens pecking on graves
shards of stars
encrusted in the deep dark horizon
the blue ocean and the monkish jellyfish
slackers are lining up
to buy cups of ice cream and a dripping night in the South
I walk on my hands
I drive 70 miles on the side of a mountain
the precipice is below
O the women, the jellyfish and the rosy cheeks
standing on the sidewalk with legs festively spread 
all I have is jazz jazz jazz
                                               and lots of gasoline in my bloody abyss.

Between the Moon and Seaweed

The man leans a summer ladder
on a moon approaching the eclipse
A car discharges blue smoke
into the daily exhaustion
And biological concerns
gape like fish eyes under ice in the ship’s hold
without enough oil to reach the horizon where a rainbow bends down to drink seawater.

The man and the moon sink down to sleep with seaweed
on a mist-less morning without milk and eggs
without anyone wearing a bronze name tag to open the hotel door ringing a bell
August slowly moves South
on a road redolent of cow manure with three-way intersections
pouncing from abandoned houses
From the picture frame with broken glass there remains
a child’s smile.

Cutting Hair on the Sidewalk

Cutting hair on the sidewalk
is a means to make money for poor people
and a snobby pleasure for the bourgeoisie

A unique thrill is to have your ears cleaned
a risky bout of comfort
in a historical slumber

Most dangerous is the shaving
a worn out knife expertly sharpened
you must sit still and not have an opinion

Cutting hair on the sidewalk
Remains only in a few countries like Vietnam.

Excavations

Wearing a civilizing hat and modern water-proof shoes
I step ashore from a fat ship,
a river-plying ship that does not reach the sea
I am an artist with feathers stuck under the armpits
who flaps his wings walking in the night
beneath the stars to reach a garden
where he digs all night

At sunrise, I have gathered:

The breakages of a child growing up during war, a contempt of ostentatious games, the enduring loneliness of a wandering exile, a half Western-half Vietnamese knowledge mixed with cooking oil and sprinkled with black peppers, the ambition of one who stands in the wing watching the clowns dance amid foolish applause,

and my own skull,
smeared with dirt and sand.

Sketch for a Self-Portrait

for Loan

This is my life: not beautiful but with some meaning.
This is my mother: also the mother of the sea.
This is my father: a dead man, the rifle next to his body still loaded.
This is my brother: an impotent and loud man.
This is my big sister: half belonging to her husband, half to her underwear.
This is my little sister: squashed by history and money.
This is my wife: my only friend.
This is my daughter: from the darkness of her mother’s womb she brought light.
This is my language: half underwater, half on the shore.
This is my people: all hatched from eggs.
This is my country: which counry? I asked.
This is my enemy: identical to me, tired and rail thin.
This is my ancestor: an old stooping monkey,
(Who fed me by shaking the sycamore tree so the figs fell into my mouth)
This is my toy: made of clay.
This is my daily newspaper: all canards,
(The ducks that laid the eggs that hatched into all of us).

This is my life: not for sale.

At The Home of a Fisherman

As the last crow on the power line flew away carrying on its wing a napping bug
I stood alone in a parking lot watching the clouds scrub the sky with fingerless hands
I hesitated, as usual, by rote, turned the ignition then drove South
Where land bordered sea
Where a fisherman ate seaweed and paved a path with shells leading to a small house facing the bay
A man who seldom washed but robust like a boiled brown egg
I stayed overnight among fishing rods, rags, and simple tales preserved with salt redolent of self regard
I woke up twice in the night, once to urinate and once to admire
The stars in the sky
Eyes that do not need a face
I woke up late the fisherman had gone downhill only I remained with sacks of dried seaweed
And the bay’s surface a deep blue
Without a single crow
A perfect day I wanted to acquaint myself with compromises, to eat seaweed,
I wanted to write a couple of simple things, to read a deceased poet
He was also a fisherman
With dreams for baits.

To X. and I

If I am an immoral sadness
then you are the old direction
protecting the night flights
I walk on bridges connecting two alien shores
my hand holding on to nagging curses
then you are a small dictionary
defining secret words to me

The brief long-distant phone conversation
interrupted by a civil war and coup d’etats
midway there’s a broken bench
where I sit clutching flowers
then you are a tourist photographing
me among courteous people
arriving from afar.

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Tran Vang Sao

TRAN VANG SAO, real name Nguyen Dinh, was born in Hue in 1942. His father was killed by the French during the First Indochina War. During the Vietnam War, Vang Sao was a contributor to the underground newspaper "Youths Against America." He joined the National Liberation Front in 1965, lived in areas under its control, broadcasting propaganda, until 1972, when he was injured and removed to the north. In spite of his allegiance to the Communist cause during the war--his pen name, "Vang Sao," means "Yellow Star," a reference to the national flag--he is blacklisted as a writer for his candid depiction of social conditions inside Vietnam. His voice is bemused, ironic, deliberately banal, a reaction against the dogmatic bombast of many of his contemporaries. On January 26, 1992, authorities in Son Tay confiscated a large collection of Vang Sao's manuscripts. He now lives in Hue. His poems have been translated into English and published in the journals American Poetry Review, xconnect and The Literary Review.

I Get To Eat Meat

I let myself imagine a day when I get to eat meat
I laugh and talk cheerfully
a piece of meat with a hunk of fat
                                               slips down my throat
my two eyes are wide open
I squat on the floor and
                           a plate with lots of meat in front of my face
long stalks of green onion floating
                                            in grease
hand holding chopsticks mouth chewing
the sun blazing through the leaves
an afternoon in summer with no wind

I wake up and scratch my neck
the river water is salty
I go to the end of the alley to smoke a cigarette
then say out loud to myself
it will thunderstorm this evening bringing cool weather

August 19, 1982

Night

night of screams flowing through the brain stabbed suddenly
                                                                      in the throat
rain streams down
then silence
no winds
no sounds of dripping water
emptied out thwarted

night sneaking behind back in front of face left right over
                                                          head below feet
eyes
hats worn snugly
outside windows
in corners of rooms
behind a rotting bamboo partition
shhh!

night oozing blood from fingertips
clawing through garbage
a plastic bag
a torn rag
lumps of rice
pieces of bone
broken bottles rusty cans copper wire

nights of rats and men burrowing inside sewers
under a bridge
in the middle of a market
on a sidewalk
mud
water
sweat
dirt
trash
and
shit

night of flares in the sky men holding flags
                                                      running over blood
teeth grinding
faces green with fright
assault slogans
arms thrusting skyward
K57 DKB F105 B40 AR15 AK M113 T54
people dying
people living
people laughing
people crying

1975

night of demonstrations on the streets
tanks hand grenades concertina barb wires
masks and hunting dogs

night during war staying up to watch a corpse

night of B52 vomiting chemicals

night in 1968
night of espionage
night of conspiracies
night of assassinations
night of suicides
night of kidnappings
night of executions
night of hurrahs
night of denouncements
night of prison
night of blood
night of hunger
night of escaping overseas
night gouges the eyes of a mute man
night of Satan chewing the Eucharist
         face turned skyward laughing absolving sins

night of a number eight storm
night of hands clasped together in prayer
night of escaping overseas

night and morning after misty rain over a pile of human shit
night of getting up in the middle of sleep to watch night
night with last night's ghosts hovering before door
night of mice squeaking in someone else's house
night of cats fighting on roof
night of male grasshopper having head bitten off
night of whores chasing bad luck
         in front of the Teacher's College
burning raw salt glue and a stub broom
obscure night of adultery
night of you fragrant and intoxicating
night of one who has lost his mind wearing a mask of a saint
         hiding in the dark to scare children just for fun
night calm without winds
night and me alone in night
night not yet over
already the sounds of children banging on drums
                                              the unicorn dance

October 17, 1990

Taking The Wife To Give Birth

a morning in May I took you to give birth
it was during rice harvesting season it had drizzled
I'm happy you had an easy birth
and a boy
the trees on both sides of the road were still wet
mother lit a bunch of incense sticks to thank
           the sky the earth and our ancestors

my wife lay breathing on the birth table
her belly big and round
I'm a man with nothing to do I stood outside
smoking a cigarette and peering in
I can't remember anything
two upturned metal dippers by a water tank
a few pebbles beneath the eaves
it won't rain anymore
I squatted I stood up I smoked a cigarette I looked back and
forth
my wife lay breathing on the birth table
her belly big and round
a window opened brightly before her face
the banana leaves in a nearby garden showed drops of water
I heard the voices of two women from inside the room
a truck's engine crackling on Thuan An Street
and the sound of a child crying
I stepped onto the threshold
the two women looked at me and smiled
I walked home
there was a light breeze among the leaves
I said out loud to myself
it won't be sunny for a while yet

Hearsays

this one croaked
named Nguyen Van He
eight years old
cassava poisoning
dead three days before his mother knew
          rites performed by neighbors

Tran Van Ha
forty years old
four children
hoeing in the mountain
hand grenade blew up
died
wife and children could not get there in time for funeral

person lying here
a man without known
name age home village
died wearing a Puppet-Army shirt
a pair of brown woman's pants
lain face down five meters from railroad tracks
face beaten flat no eyes nose hands or feet

dead person here
twenty six years old
shot
a bullet through the head
first and last name: Pham Van Te
reason: committed a robbery then ran
did not stop when called

Nguyen Han
thirty nine years old
stabbed self in throat
          with a broken bottle of orange soda
some said because of madness
did say before death
nowadays
there's not even shit to eat

Nguyen Thi Lun
thirty four years old
Le Van E thirteen years old
Le Thi Muon ten years old
Le Van Thuoc six years old
Le Thi Ly two years old
suicide by pills
in kitchen
nearby a few warm worm-eaten sweet potatoes
          were found inside a rimless woven basket
note left behind said
too much hardship can't stand it
me and my kids must die

Tran Thi Lan
two and a half years old
sick with no medicine
died

Nguyen Van Lon
forty five years old
starved for too long then ate too much
died
no close relatives

Nguyen Van Thu
twenty six years old
died shirtless on a pile of garbage
in the middle of the market

Nguyen Huu Thuc
fifty years old
died at a banquet table
could not be rushed to hospital
more than a thousand people at funeral

Phan Ngoc The
died during cholera epidemic of 19..
lived to be forty two years old

buried here are four children
approximately six to nine years old
dengue fever
lain dead in market

Pham Huynh Thuong
died at fifty six years old
popped blood vessel
while reading a speech
near the end

November 1982

Translated from the Vietnamese by Linh Dinh

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Eight Vietnamese poets. They all write in Vietnamese, although three of them are living in the US.

Leia Dois poemas de Linh Dinh, English / Portuguese e também visite Sibila 12

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