I Want Nothing

to do with my mother’s

sadness, her mouth:

a pockmark on every door

that opens onto a memorial scene, 

her mouth: the beginning

of traffic. Odd to think

of it as an ugly and frequent

song on the radio,

a small bird shitting

and dying in my hands.

He is dead, she says,

over and over again,

except in Vietnamese,

which to me doesn’t sound

as tragic—a little uglier,

maybe, but less tragic,

for sure. The house phone

on her lap sings its dead

hum into the static air

of our living room. Who?

Who? I ask. I shake her

shoulders, Who?

When she finally looks

at me through the slit

of her black bangs,

she tells me about the man

she would have married

if she stayed in Vietnam,

and my posture straightens,

and my eyes roll, and I am 

relieved at the absence

of my own grief, and I hate him, 

this man, this dead man

that won’t stay gone

now that he’s gone

for good, now that he has built

this house of meat to rot

and stew on the sunniest days, 

now that he fills the marrow

in each bone of my mother’s regret. 

When she thinks of love 

either she’s a widow or divorced, 

and I believed for a while

that regret is leaving

the burning house 

empty-handed, but he is

already ash, and I tell her

she made the right choice, 

which is funny, cause I hate

my father, and often forget

that he’s still alive.