When Clouds Touch Us: Part I

I vow fewer
purple quail eggs
on my swollen knees
while Pam plots around
her religion’s no-music rule.

My throat is fluffed
to relay party news
but incense commands
a hush.

On the altar sits
our one portrait of Father,
his forever young eyes
behind smokey coils.

A yearning rips
through my bones
into marrow,
driven as

Mother’s vow
to ensure our future,

Brother Quang’s quest
for a scholarship

My lips twitch
between
elation and guilt.

A paper,
a pencil,
a phone number.
Mundane items
mismatching
Mother’s excitement

We must begin anew so

Quang can cease
braiding his intestines
like a parent,

Khôi can clutch
his vision as
a doctor for animals,

and my youngest can stop
relying on her friend’s mother
to pay for two.

Rebuilding demands
needlework patience,
even more daunting
than fleeing in panic.
We must keep seeking
until we can bounce
rosy lives in our palms.

Mother grimaces,
thinking of more debt
to mother of Pam.

I urge each child
to withstand
must above want.

Not a suggestion,
stated in her jaws,
grinding, pulsating,
in beats of a frog’s throat.

Pam convulses
like a fish on grass,
asking who would
yank away

a best friend

She negotiated end of day
when market merchants
must be rid of remnants:
a spinning banana bunch
priced as one hand,
a tail-to-head tuna
cleaned, salted, iced,
fruit in season sold
in basket bundles.

“Don’t worry,
I won’t drive her over there.
Khôi only has a permit,
Vũ’s not here to interfere.”

Brother Quang and I
would never alter
our votes.

I learn to herd children,
we clip grass, tutor equations,
gift money all to Mother,
enough to appease rent,
so we can stay.

I almost add “Ta Đa!”
but hear tụt tụt tụt
from a brother who
maintains all Vietnamese.
Your weight and your talk
slow me, remember?

You’ve chiseled
that memory
too many times
for my nerves to jolt.

I giggle to Pam,
“Brothers are on my side,”
as we decipher
dangling participles.

Across the dark room
whispers I seldom catch
drift toward a father
unmentioned in daylight.

Always the familiar adage,
bắt cá hai tay,
catch fish with two hands.

And yet
our vision for each child—
belly free of storms,
heart wide as the sea,
mind stretching the sky—
keeps fading to mist
as we contort
every finger, palm, arm
to reach basic food/shelter.

You deserve to grow up
where new shoes become
routine yet essential
as breaths.

His Caribbean grandparents
send treasures in/out of season
from a garden inside glass.

My taste buds
slosh in envy.

I glare,
ready to boomerang insults
should some retort
what they think they know:
jungles, tigers, soldiers,
children bombed to tears.

No other Asian
to contradict me.

At the second family vote
Brother Khôi avoids my glare
and flips toward Mother
as if finned like his fish.

Pam and I
gush the backstory
as Mrs. Washington
chameleon shifts
from anxious burgundy
to sympathetic yellow
to practical beige.

Cheer too wide,
tone too smooth,
our neighbor can’t hide
that Mother maneuvered
across the grass before us.

I often forget Mother
was once a girl who
imitated pounding horses,
chased-loud-fun.

Brother Quang booms,
We didn’t abandon
our homeland
to sever the family’s limbs
in our struggle to rebuild.

For Mother
he gifts a tiny amethyst,
purple, matching the lost ring
from Father.

Mother in serene sleep
at last answers my limbs
jerking in the sheets.

Mother never joins
my rustling sighs
although she possesses
decades of reasons:
uprooted
from ancestral north
to a wartime south
raising children alone,
then across the ocean,
now once again
seeking, seeking

My limbs temper
into stillness,
letting Mother know
I’ve absorbed her
unsaid.

We all play kickball at recess,
even Pink Boy and his clump.

Half wary,
half carefree.

Mother has chided
if my heaviest fear rises
from pointless judgment
then I rank low
on the ladder of suffering.

Pam and I wear matching
ankle-touching sheer skirts,
second-skin silver pants,
pink-feathered metallic tops.

On slippery wood
my knees glance the floor
yet tugs do not let me fall.

On the highway
passing sky pines
slender and swaying,
my intestines ocean churn.

Must be my
frantic gut dragonflies
bashing bulbous heads
against bulbous heads
as we plow toward
another unknown.