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