#1 Beauty Nail Salon Poem by Paul Tran

Hi, honaaay! Welcome to #1 Beauty
Nail Salon. We make you #1,
okay! How I help you
today? You want manicure? Pedicure?
That's okay! I cure everything.
(Only $6 more.)You go
sit there. My name is Chien
& I do very good for you. Okay,
honaaay? I make you #1.
The perfect manicure begins like a careful plan.
Wash your hands. Remove any dirt
from the land. Scrape off the native
coats with acetone. Rinse thoroughly.
Honaaay, you like French tip for yo nail?
French tip make look white & so sexy!
All my customers love The White Nail.
For French tips:
Clip the keratin armor
until your nails are slick. Keep each operation
uniform. Rank— File the top
& sides. Push back the enemy
cuticles with oil & lotion: The chemical arsenal
of a Vietnamese manicurist named, "War."
Even oceans away, she carries the war
like a name. She is bent over
scrubbing your fingers, eliminating the dead
skin. The cuticle foliage stir in her memories
of slaughtered soldiers, bodies washed
away, a sister buried alive—
Honaaay, what color you like?
I got red, blue, blue with the sparkle—
Troi oi—I think the red look so sexy on you!
Add a base. All 37 of them. Then the color of burning
and bloodshed. Make sure your brush gets deep
down into the nail groove: The hard-to-reach
trenches. Maximum coverage makes the killing easy—
The operation for beauty a breeze. (To prevent
the slightest chipping,)Add a layer of toluene. Ignore
your casualties: The beasts born without teeth.
The bombs—still—bursting—Clean up
any mistakes you make with a manicure pen.
A pen is all you need to be #1, to make an ugly truth
look beautiful. A truth ugly only to those it makes insane,
whose careful planning it complicates.
It is no coincidence Vietnamese refugees operate
the nail salons in this country. It's called racial
capitalism. The beauty industry of America has been taken over
by a sparkle nail polish mafia offering you the Orient
for cheap. For Americans, "Life in the Orient
[has always been] cheap! " But we remember—
We remember the men who raided our villages—who promised
us freedom— who dragged us here like dogs.
So when the day comes,
when this empire collapses onto its knees,
spooling in a pool of its own blood, we will be ready
to make you all so beautiful.
Honaaay, don't worry!
I make you drop—
dead— gorgeous.