“Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.”

—The Book of Job, New Living Translation



In the beginning, there was light

strangeness in me as they, without fail,

wanted me to speak

about human rights.
It swelled at a Q&A

where a white woman grabbed the mic

and apologized because we had to

converse in English.
“It’s so harrowing none of us here

could speak Bahasa, or Thai.”

Even though NT

was Vietnamese.
After the panel ended

a man—complimentary wine

in his hand—might’ve gone to me

and started mocking his ancestors.
“Oh, how evil they were, ravaging

every corner, oh, every corner, of the world.

And murdered your people,

oh, your people!”
And then I’d feel guilty after I saw mountains

of books—unsold and mine—in the festival bookshops.

If I was being a lake that day, I’d purchase some

and sleepread my own words during the flight home.
O, Lady of the Ocean Blue, why

did I have people translate my work? Why

tf did I even write? Will I forever be seen

as a voiceless subaltern?
On my walk back to the hotel, I might

pull a hysterical cry and curse God.

In the beginning, I lost a job—now I’ve to do this

to keep my parents’ rice cooker steaming.
During these festivals, my main support system

was the room’s bathtub. I would slip my tear-

wet body into the boiling baby lake

and right away I would feel safe.
Boat-like on the foamy water, I’d miss terribly

the grandparents I never met. Ompung Boru

who died on a ferry on her way

to the mainland.
“Could never forget the sunset, as Omak

was on her last breath, how orange it was,”

Namboru Ana would say. Father said she kept

her only picture and she said she didn’t.
Alone like an arrogant God, I would just jump

on the bed lake-wet. Woke up at 7 AM in the lavish

hotel room and dragged my hunger to the McDonalds across

the street—since it didn’t come with breakfast, which would be $50.
O, my dear Baby Lake, it’s an illusion, all of it.


For NT