This is a collection of poems I dedicated to different family members who had a fundamental impact on my way of life, mentality, and mission. My mother, grandmother, grandfather, and many other members are living proofs of how resilient and brilliant Vietnamese people can be. I am grateful to be here every day due to the courage, ambition, and faith of all the ancestors that came before me.

Ông Ngoại1 rose from the dead and decided
to quit alcohol and cigarettes, altogether.
Ông Ngoại invented a cure for pneumonia
and fought dauntlessly like Thánh Gióng fought Giặc Ân.

Ông Ngoại stopped the libricide fire with a finger snap
and sewed the torn pages back together by a magic spell.
Then birds whispered the missing words into his ears,
and he taught us about the country that was his love and pride.

Ông Ngoại wrote poems with his black ink pen.
Ông Ngoại raised children with his black ink pen.
Ông Ngoại fought the War with his black ink pen.
His words were so loud that the foe asked to write with him.

Ông Ngoại watched my sister grow up.
Ông Ngoại read his granddaughter’s poems.
Ông Ngoại won the National Book Award for Poetry.
Ông Ngoại befriended Ocean Vương and they drink together sometimes.

Ông Ngoại flew poets from all over the world,
on the weary navy blue Vespa that he loved as a child,
to a tiny stilt house, at the end of a dark alley, above a fusty canal
to talk poetry and life, freedom and war,
and laugh about it, like it all happened in another lifetime.

Sewage water submerged the discolored nouveau-ceramic floor

of the shabby stilt house on the edge of a stinking canal.

Crumpled cartons, candy covers, and coiled curls coasted by the 

wooden camp bed, where I watched with pure enchantment. 

As I tried to dip my toe into the filthy water, grandpa 

gave me a deadly glare that made me instantly pull up my leg.

Bà cố cackled uncontrollably, telling my grandpa to relax 

and let me be a kid. She hid the peacock-patterned china vase 

that I broke from grandpa. She played with me on her worn skeleton

 - hopscotch, kick the can, and tag. She told me about the fairy 

tale of Tấm, whose kindness moved the King and made her his queen.

Bà cố taught me how to be a child in the darkness of this world. 

Bà cố beheld the betrayal of her husband and her best friend.

Bà cố almost starved to death after the war.  

Bà cố’s brother was buried alive by the Communists.

Bà cố lost a child due to a heroin overdose

Bà cố was an 8-year-old girl surviving inside an 80-year-old woman.

Twice a week, whether she has the time

or not, she would call just to see my face.

But last night, I watched her on Facetime, 

as she tried, clumsily, to split my sister’s

tousled, uncombed hair into three equal parts.

Frowning at the result, she, then, put a bow over

the tangled hair pieces sticking out of my 

sister’s front head. Then, she advised me about 

the fight between me and my boyfriend. 

She told me to just be patient because 

“Men are stupid, just like your dad.

They should have gone extinct by now if

natural selections actually work. ” 

We burst out laughing, just like girlfriends,

gossiping about other people’s problems 

and complaining about their boyfriends.

Then it struck me: how she was loved,

how she was raised, why there has always

been tension between her and grandma.

I could not help but wonder, how does she 

do it all without anyone teaching her?

How ungrateful I was for getting 

frustrated at her, when she could not 

afford to send me to the school I wanted. 

I realized now that maybe, 

twenty years ago, she had chosen

to love a little bit differently.

That summer, I visited the cramped and humid 

azure trailer, in which my rigorously Catholic grandmother 

has lived for over a decade. Bà Nội - 

survivor of the feudal system, patriarchy,

colonization, racism, and immigration.

One sticky afternoon, we talked 

on the corny-looking floral tapestry sofa - 

science breakthrough, universal healthcare, international non-profit

 - dreams so big that I did not dare to verbalize 

to myself. Bà Nội nodded left and right, then said:

"The higher you climb, the harder you fall."

Had feudalism, colonization, slavery, and war

made du people Annamite apathetic?

Giran's voice ached in my head:

“The Annamese is indifferent and passive, 

content with scarcity, 

for they have no great needs, 

and no grand desires.”

I stared at the dead cockroach trapped in the screen

of the archaic microwave which Bà Nội refused to discard.

I contemplated her journey from North to South 

because jealous Charlie despised all theists.

I envisioned her mud spinach field and pig pens 

that put all five kids through college.

I hurt,

for oppression is the theme of our history,

for war is how the world recognizes our nation,

for indifferent and passive is how my people are portrayed, 

which I write, against, against, and against ...