Ralph E. & Doris M. Hansmann Poetry Prize, 2017

 

I am four. 

I cry at the sound of my own father’s mother-tongue.

Too harsh, too nasal, too loud. 

We are in the home office, surrounded 

by bamboo bodhisattvas on bookcases.

I stand up from my creaking chair to leave.

“Ngồi xuống! Sit back down!”

Laughing Buddha laughs harder.

I fall to the ground in protest. Mouth sealed, I refuse to repeat: 

One, two, three. He gives up and offers me a durian candy to stop crying.

Sầu riêng. My favorite.

 

I am fourteen.

It is the first day of French class, page VII of the textbook has a map:

On page 10, a girl in a conical bamboo hat says: 

Monsieur French teacher laughs to himself.

 

I am fifteen.

I say to my rowdy Vietnamese cousin

Who keeps jumping on the hotel bed in Saigon.

Apart from names of foods, this is all I can remember.

“Ngồi xuống!” He laughs and continues to jump.

 

I am seventeen.

We are sitting around a table

In a café in Da Nang with

Cups of chrysanthemum tea and shallow dishes

Of sticky tapioca and dried shrimp: bánh bèo.

I am stuttering and struggling through broken French, 

With Dad’s school friends from before the war.

Otherwise I stay silent. I hear my name, smile, and nod,

Watch passersby and 

Let the trickling fountain in the corner

Tune out changing tones and accents and hearty laughter. 

 

I am twenty.

I have never felt more estranged: 

a Chinese person who doesn’t speak Chinese

In a Vietnamese-owned Chinese restaurant in Paris. 

They hand me a menu: 

Riz cantonais, House Special Fried Rice

Raviolis chinois, Potstickers 

Poulet à la citronnelle, Lemongrass Chicken – a Vietnamese dish.

A waitress brings a boiling hot pot, red with Sichuan peppers 

and a plate of stir-fried abalone in black bean sauce to a table of men

laughing, roaring, speaking Cantonese.

I can find neither on the greasy, laminated, three-panel menu.  

I order fried rice and lemongrass chicken to-go. 

The waiters speak Vietnamese with each other and I make small talk.

« Vous êtes quelle origine ? » they ask me.

I am Korean-Chinese-Vietnamese American.

Nope, I only speak English…and French now, I suppose.

Yes, it is a shame.