Sunday, January 15, 2012

She No Zen, 2004, published in To Sing Along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets


If the river yet to be born floats down in a snowflake
Spring yet to return whispers among browning leaves
Shuffling with the steps of an unconceived child
Cutting into her skin
In elusive waves polishing her dreams
Unspeaking the secrets unshed
Between what has already gone and what has yet to come

Logged in the frozen desert of a woman half drowning
Between jaded rocks
Stones skipping over her heartbeat
Ricocheting on tortoise shells
Sheathing the air she breathes in

Defer to pulsating stars
Pooling along the horizon dividing
Darkness and dawn

Walking Manifesto #2, 2000, published in Bamboo Among the Oaks


I once asked a Native Hawaiian woman
What she did for a living
She paddles canoes
Because that’s what her people do.
They live on islands
Between the immensity of the sky
Above them
And the immensity of the ocean
Between them.
They salute the sun
Every morning
And spend years
Learning to read
The shades of the sun
That tell them
The difference between
Safe and unsafe crossings.

These days, I too know
That if people were to ask me,
What am I doing in life?
My response is pre-destined
By the people I was born into:
I walk in life,
Because that’s what the Hmong people
Used to do.

Having crossed the ocean,
I still walk, for justice,
Because that’s what my people need.
We live in Pan Asian villages
Between the immensity of the Western world
Beneath us
And the immensity of Western culture
Around us.
I salute the spirit of my communities
And am spending my years
Learning how to read
The shades of their dreams,
Shaping the wave
That will take us all
To a true American shore
Of peace, justice and equality.

Women in War Country, 2002, published in Paj Ntaub Voice


Here,
Last dove chasing a fleeing moment of peace
My sister flies half-way across the country
To hold on to a fleeting future, to a man who is only a friend
Hoping they will have a chance to find out if he will ever be more
If he ever comes back from the war that just called his name.

No passionate good-byes, as the smallpox shot
Already shrouds his body in a contagious hands-off.
No passionate good-byes, as he walks into shadows
Where there can be no promises of any tomorrows.

Here,
My friend, heavy with child,
Does not ask if her children’s father will be called away,
Just stays safely tucked away, feet and thoughts firmly grounded,
Holding on to the present safety of a woman with her man by her side,
His baby growing in her belly, their children, laughing at his knee.

Here,
I too remember
Another man of the military
Listening to him talk about learning to how to use a beating stick
To keep Haitian refugees quiet in Guantanamo Bay
Doing his duty to his country.  How my heart broke
Crying for what his hands must have done,
Crying for what his eyes must have seen,
Wondering how his soul could bear
His pain, wondering how one could
Heal his pain, hoping he would never
Go too far, where one could no longer
Reach him.

Here,
We are all women from war country
Facing down the violence in our men’s eyes
Facing down the violence in our men’s hands

Fighting for peace, at home

Walking Manifesto #1, 2000, For the end of our innocence as New Minnesotans, published in the Asian American Renaissance Journal

I walk into a cell
The secured wing
Of a hospital.
A Hmong woman stands in the middle.
She is our queen of evil.
Baby killer, mass murderer.
A ghost fading into the whiteness of the walls
Into the darkness of her crime.
The only color:
The silver of the nailed-down toilet,
The silver of the metal door,
The silver of her ID tag.

There is no innocence.
None for the 12-year old bride.
None for the 24-year old mother of 6,
None for the rape survivor,
The domestic violence survivor,
None for the mother
Of a sexually-abused 8 year-old-girl.

Is there anything else she can do for us?  She asks.

Is there anything we can do for her?  I ask, shamed
For the rest of us.

But even my voice, now found, drowns
Into the unforgiveness of her children’s ghosts.

There is no justice for fallen angels
Whose silver wings were clipped
So long ago, that all people can see,
Are the silver bars of their cages,
And the silver bullets they drove into our hearts.

Even my wings cannot bear that weight and fall.

The Day I Learned My Grandmother's Tongue, 1999, in Memoriam, Thiong Thongkhueyang Lyfoung


The day I learned to speak my grandmother’s tongue
An Eastern wind shifted the earth
While the western walls were whisked away…
And the mountains of Laos rose on the horizon,
Roaring with the sound of river dragons
Splashing rainbow tail waves
Across oceans of opium poppies
Just awakened from their slumber
By the baby chick with no feathers
Hiding under the house board floor
Waiting to teach the next generation
That to live means to save the most vulnerable.

The day I learned to speak my grandmother’s tongue
I tied my own tongue upon the eight tones
Of the Hmong language
Stumbling upon words like a baby, like it should be
Restoring back the balance between the ages
As I freed my grandmother’s voice
To rise clearly, to rise wisely
Mighty like the elders’ powers should be

And my fears faded away, like the black spots on her skin
Revealed for their true glory, as battle scars
From a life lived completely
And I found the ultimate truth
That I will not escape my nature
That I am a rock from the old mountain
A strong Hmong woman
Carved from another strong Hmong woman