works by william pham, 2005-present

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Eulogy for My Birthplace
(the place that birthed me;
 not the place where I was born)

 I do not know Vietnamese.
 I do not know Vietnam
 Viet Nam
(Saigon
 is gone).

 Is Ho Chi Minh hero or villain?
 The question burns down video stores
 in Westminster and I do not know
 Saigon
(Saigon
 is gone).

 Pho tai chin
 ca phe sua da
 bun thit nuong cha gio

 are the only phrases I can
 speak when you ask if I know
 my Mother language,
     the language that gave birth to me.

 Losing five dollars and getting hit;
 stealing from a neighbor
(I called it borrowing)
 and getting hit
 are the first memories I recall
 when you ask if I know my Mother,
     the woman who gave birth to me

(but then I remember that she
 dropped out of college in Vietnam
 to marry my father,
     the father who fathered me).

 Vietnam
 Viet Nam
 reduced to burning rice paddies,
   burning limbs,
   spinal cords wrapped in napalm,
   jelly-like tapioca,
   sticky rice and ham wrapped in banana leaves,
   corpses wrapped in banana leaves;
 I eat my country to learn my country.

 Vietnam is

 pho tai chin
 ca phe sua da
 bun thit nuong cha gio

 backstabbing,
 backtalking
 housewives
 trapped in San Jose
 reduced to bragging
 about the eldest son
 who won the science fair
 graduated from Berkeley
 accepted into medical school
(he will be a doctor)
 "Oh - a doctor?"

 My father is a doctor now -
 was a doctor in Saigon too,
 but Saigon is gone,
 and the housewives whisper behind
 their husbands' backs:

"Saigon is gone".

 I do not know Vietnamese.
 I do not know Vietnam
 Viet Nam
(Saigon
 is gone).

copyright (c) 2005 by william pham