i.
     Nam Phương
final empress bore her lake

     oak-white jade
continental. You are older than that.

     I turn history gold
dream-fallen ash, therefore, public

     amaranth republic
sweet of stem, crepuscular cosmology

     wept in dirty paws
wrote of monkeys—


ii.
                              for you, my flesh
                         wet silver, amethyst
                                 and rye

myth preceded

                       then
               centuries passed
                         Nam Phương
without pause, stabbed herself.

          A center held.
             
Gibbons swung
          tendrils down, baboon
     and ape.

                 I rite myself today
     detritus knock
               divine.

     And she who takes the hour
pits a chalice into stone—


iii.
                  darker queen of mercy
spare us—


iv.
     in 1858, allegedly, Campagne de Cochinchine
began, thus our child learned to swim.

Gibbons scratch an anthill.

Yes, the stairwell held us, bones. Gibbon cry.

A father slipped his finger in papaya, therefore,
I was born, queen of chive, milk. Spare us
automatic, bottomless thrones of light.

Lovers bathe inside of me, frayed—


v.
                    imagine us
              a crown

          Palme’s death
                              in Sweden

     later, learned
of Guernica

               imagine that
          lip surpassing massacre.                              

     Stories of my people
march into another. How is it love

     something more machine,
countries lost between us—