Chasm
By HIEU MINH NGUYEN
Monthly, my family calls from Vietnam
to inform us about the dead.
Their voices amplified through the speakerphone
while my mother sits upright in her bed
& performs a variety of mundane tasks:
sewing, word finds, removing nail polish.
Of course I want to assume things:
dead body, dead butter-yellow lawn—
If I try hard enough, I can gather
each story, like marbles, into my mouth
spit them into the drain & watch
as hair climbs out.
Every month, a new body washes up
in conversation:
a great aunt, a dog, a cousin or two, but now
it’s my father’s first wife.
Four-days-dead in her bathroom
my uncle says
— she lived alone, abandoned
years earlier, by her husband.
Buried in a backyard
somewhere in that roadside village
the woman he left in Vietnam
to come to America
he promised he’d return
for her & their two sons
but instead married my mother.
— well, she was found dead.
Four-days-dead, in a bathroom
my father once built for her.
Buried in my uncle’s backyard.
Had to kill the dog too.
It kept trying to dig her out.
Either anyone can be forgotten
or only the forgotten can bring
forth a good haunting, spanning
the chasm of the living, above which
a bridge made of ghosts, full of ghosts
waiting to be summoned through
the receiver
one by one by one by dead one.
I can see them all
gathering
in the pixelated air. A patch of light
ruptured by dust. I know my mother
will make a great ghost one day.
They love her, the ghosts. They watch her
all the time. She knows this, but she just sits there
unbothered, biting the seam of a white dress
until it splits.
By HIEU MINH NGUYEN
Monthly, my family calls from Vietnam
to inform us about the dead.
Their voices amplified through the speakerphone
while my mother sits upright in her bed
& performs a variety of mundane tasks:
sewing, word finds, removing nail polish.
Of course I want to assume things:
dead body, dead butter-yellow lawn—
If I try hard enough, I can gather
each story, like marbles, into my mouth
spit them into the drain & watch
as hair climbs out.
Every month, a new body washes up
in conversation:
a great aunt, a dog, a cousin or two, but now
it’s my father’s first wife.
Four-days-dead in her bathroom
my uncle says
— she lived alone, abandoned
years earlier, by her husband.
Buried in a backyard
somewhere in that roadside village
the woman he left in Vietnam
to come to America
he promised he’d return
for her & their two sons
but instead married my mother.
— well, she was found dead.
Four-days-dead, in a bathroom
my father once built for her.
Buried in my uncle’s backyard.
Had to kill the dog too.
It kept trying to dig her out.
Either anyone can be forgotten
or only the forgotten can bring
forth a good haunting, spanning
the chasm of the living, above which
a bridge made of ghosts, full of ghosts
waiting to be summoned through
the receiver
one by one by one by dead one.
I can see them all
gathering
in the pixelated air. A patch of light
ruptured by dust. I know my mother
will make a great ghost one day.
They love her, the ghosts. They watch her
all the time. She knows this, but she just sits there
unbothered, biting the seam of a white dress
until it splits.
Friendly reminder that any account I see associated with or promoting intolerance will be removed, I don't want you here. Everyone else, have a nice day.