PhuocTan Diep Poems

I meet my husband under a nameless bridge in this brainwashed city. All identity is buried under the red of the sun.

Our memories return, hesitant and pregnant with guilt twitching under our skin like the tap tap of phantom sticks playing marching tunes. My skin is embossed with napalm scars, indelible maps, like our wounded land — healed but still wet underneath. Do you remember, the orange of the fires that burnt the ground, the naked trees that joined our hands waving at planes we called our friends?
...

A can of Canada Dry ginger ale lies exposed, torn in half. A tramp sniffs it for booze. It smells of fruit fermenting in wet packs. His boots are rotten, toecaps lifting off dirt-encrusted feet. He looks like he has marched a long way, from a far off bunker in some foreign field to this hidden place under a leafy bush in St. James Park.

The green map of Canada expands, reflected in sodium streetlights, mixing with leaves and covering him with lines of longitude and latitude, like a thin wire cage.
...

‘Lights out, lights off, ’
we flee our beds,
downstairs, down there
helter-skelter, into the shelter
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12pm
I hate waiting - always have.

1pm
...

Light peels back the night from faces
with prayers engraved on chiselled lips

the mist of souls is teased towards the sky
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