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2021 Academy of American Poets Prize

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My sinking town

by Khải Đơn

 

                         —For Saigon

My sinking town ** For Saigon A boy was sucked into the sewage My boyfriend talked leisurely while sprinkling green onion on my congee bowl raindrop knocks on the glass window rebellious like an angry crowd the onion sank in the glutinous liquid carried me back to the same afternoon: when old woman pulled my bicycle out of a black water hole forming at the junction A screw on the pedal cut my right arm – bleeding I might have joined the little boy Next morning in a fever of water, I walk down the building the fruit vendors are gossiping: High tide in midtown their bananas, guavas and coconut floating beside waves surged by buses and bikes fish net in hand, they caught most of mangosteens drifting wild They missed some watermelons swimming fastest since Mai An Tiem - The Watermelon Prince threw them into the ocean aching for the motherland abandoning him The fever sways me in a nightmare, where little boys and girls flying down the mysterious black hole of the town tidal flood I lift every thin metal patch covering broken drainage pipes In despair seeking for innocent arms hanging down there Tiny sewers have grown to a GIANT black canal cutting the district from its city - an island at midtown A woman cried out: The canal flow creeping into the parking lot When is the town swallowed in that thick liquid monster? My fever drowns me; I see me – stepping Into a pothole---- It has evolved into an unknown dimensional world. Rapids of foamy boxes, vivid red coke bottles and of laughing shampoo containers drifting to the river mouth breathing in the destined hundred-year flood I survived like ---- Noah in the glittering trash ocean

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