Today, is your birthday,
you would've been
ninety four years old,
our Earth still completing
its orbit around you
on this day,
your love still a shining sun
in all the lives you touched,
still as bright as the light
this morning,
the star shining your glowi...

For my father

You are not in many of the family videos, you were always the one to record the Christmas Eve dinners that you, yourself, most likely cooked, or the first time we built a huge snowman in the cold Thanksgiving desert snow of Albuquerque. But your voice always narrated...

I must confess, I am no parent, I do not know the pain parents go through when losing their blood.

I must confess, I did not watch the news of Sandy Hook, I talked about it with my mom on gchat briefly, I must confess I looked it up on Google News afterwards. 26 dead, 20 children.

I...

You had cut your hand in college,
At the sinews of your knuckle.
We had gone to see you before then,
for the play
That you were in.
That's how you cut your hand, I think
Carving props for your play.

I can't remember if we took you to the hospital
Or if we met yo...

We had listened to the song on the radio one day,
And decided that it would be the theme for our writing project.
Our story, our words
Were developed around the song's lyrics.

We thought of Las Vegas,
A perfect place of paradise,
Because of the brilliant sun in the midd...

I had sent a reminder to the family, you included, to try to win a home in Miami, our old home, the family's roots, and still central core, to try to win a way back home, to try to win you back home.

But my email sent to you had bounced back, your address had permanently failed mailer-daem...

On the first night of July,
Rain whiplashing the roof top
I woke up with a rhythm in my head
Like the sleepy jazzy blues of winter.

On the second day of July
Rainy day and Monday
Wet garden smelling like a river
Turtle doves lingering in the pine tree.

On the...

Until the last moments, and even at the last, I hoped you'd be a blessing, a miracle, really, and appear at my wedding, even when all attempts to reach you, to reach the divides of our family, to reach your heart and bring it home had failed.

The wedding went perfectly even without you, ev...

6AM: Get out of bed
The sun has already glittered the canyons
TV anchorman: "It will be another hot day"
Make my own rainbow through the window crack
With the shower stream
Don't know why I bother putting on lipstick
The coffee will wash it out a...

We were searching through the old family videos of us, searching for an image of you, your voice, your old humor. We found one, it was Christmas Eve in Miami, with everyone opening gifts, just after our big feast. We were all in good spirits, everyone wanted a chance at the camera, except for you...

There are times when
I feel hollow of happiness,
but even then, at my darkest
hour, our bonds
bring me back,
and I take in you again,
filling up
full of the world,
our world,
and how much there is
to love.

I had a dream of drums,
red paint on the cave walls
of a man,
low chanting
of some foreign tongue.
I was trapped in my sleep,
my heart becoming hollow,
beating hard,
my body thinner,
shrinking fast,
my flesh becoming the flesh
of the painted man,
th...

E____ had said at the shower
that as a child
I had been quite the artist –
a fact that I never gave
myself much credit for
as it was a skill
I had long stopped crafting.
Remembering why I stopped,
I believe it was because
my common fear is and was
that I re...

We are back in our old home,
your old home,
and once again, I wake up
to the cries
of the loon.
The sounds always make me
think of the story
you told my mother,
and who then told me,
that the loon
was lost,
and looking for its mother.
It matches the...

I remember when
I was two or three,
I had this habit
of simply chewing
my food,
until it lost its flavor,
and then not wanting
to swallow the empty taste.

I remember when
I was eating this burger
from McDonald's,
and the savoriness of the meat
ha...

In the morning
is when I miss you most.
Waking up to the noises
of your busy home life,
you talking on the phone
to your friends,
or watching Asian dubbed
soap operas,
pirated VHS collections
from the local Vietnamese
rental stores,
you chopping or fryi...

I do not know why I like to take pictures so much,
From the pelting-down rain on the shiny street,
To the deep wrinkles of the blue mountains,
Or the red sea where it blends into earth.
I look out the window at dusk,
When the days part, and the stars seem to be swimming in wat...

A friend gave you a bonsai tree
as a birthday present one year.
It took him 10 years to grow it.
You loved it, the miniature form
and wily bends.
But you almost destroyed the plant
in 10 days, or at least, that's how it seemed.
You let the leaves grow out
untamed, ...

I had lost a long time confidante,
and the loss dangled on me
like a swinging chain
choking at my throat,
alternating between
heaviness and numb upswings.
You knew this,
and knew me,
you knew exactly what to say
and do.
You called me up
while I was vacu...

When you were young,
you were angry,
or impatient, I should say,
with foolishness,
and b.s.
Growing up,
and even in my adult life,
I am still growing up,
you were and are still impatient
with me, more frequently back then,
than now, but still so at times,

You were home for lunch.
We were eating in the
kitchen nook, where we
spotted an oriole,
and four doves.
You encouraged me to
grab a photo
with the camera.
I tried, albeit halfheartedly,
to capture the perfect shot.
The bird kept flying away
at my mere ...

It's a lazy, rainy morning,
we sleep into the sounds
of routine against our window,
the rhythmic rain,
the cars to work, the people waking
and talking to daily patterns.
We fight the pull
of order and schedules,
the monotony of morning,
and hold onto the moment...

Supposedly, somewhere,
there is a tape of me
when I was three
talking, and singing.
I think I sung from Snow White
which I saw in either the
re-release, or on tape,
or else, the on ice version,
I can't say which,
but I was singing the
I'm wishing song,
...

You used to order tons
of return address labels.
They were for all your letters
that you wrote back home,
home being anywhere really
where there was love.
You wrote
to family, and to friends,
scattered like the roots of your life,
across lands and oceans.

I heard it will be raining here next week.
As it has been every weekend of last month
"It never rains in Southern California," they said
"But when it rains, it pours."
All day, all week,
sometimes even all month,
like one February, some years ago.

It's the morning of our departure.
You're smiling; relieved, I think,
at the stress of family being gone.
We're in the driveway, and
your door has been left open.
Murphy, that big black, checkered shepherd,
comes bounding out,
bounding to get lost
if we don't find ...

You were talking about
camping at your old cabin
with your sister
on the drive to
Bayfield.
You were recounting
how you used to
make small hearths
of stone and sticks.
Small fires,
for a small boy.

When you grew up,
you devoted yourself to
yo...

for my Mom

In those early foggy mornings, I woke up
Like clockwork, you woke up with me
Fixed your hair to a bun, you sat up
The noise from the key chain hung by your bed
The "cling clang clung," I would hear

In those early foggy mornings, I went d...

We were seeing Venice,
St. Mark's Basilica to be exact.
We were admiring the mosaics,
so many tiny shattered pieces
creating into something greater than
its broken parts,
something beautiful.
It made me think of our family,
up close, we were
a mosaic of broken ...

Five thousand Dong.
Enough for food fast,
enough to end starving
fast.
I could hold the weight of the world
in these hands,
yet they are cupped only to catch only its scraps.
I hold the weight of my world
in these hands,
yet my world is both as light as paper,<...

Your blouse rests
where it always has,
draped on top the kitchen chair.
We've changed homes since you've gone,
but it still sits in the same position
of the table
that it always has.
Sometimes, we wash it,
to keep it clean.
It's silly of us –
really –
w...

My mother's and father's roots
are like of the air and sea,
so desperately disparate
were their worlds.
My mother's call back to
the Independent rebels
who fought the French,
who had almost won
Vietnam's freedom,
but may have massacred
Christians in the pro...

I do not know that
you are watching me play,
or rather,
I should say,
I do not care.
What I care for
is how the mud
squishes between my toes and my toe nails
as I play soccer with my friends,
how I must be careful
to not hit the clothes on the wires,
to...

When I think of you,
I think of the early morning market
From the window, way before sunrise.
The old street vendor with her big barrel
Engulfing the skin-and-bone hunch back.
Her soft shivering voice: "Fresh fish, fresh shrimps"
Then off she phased into the fogg...

You do not have to work
at the pace of a hummingbird's flutter,
even they stop in quiet moments
of the summer heat,
to rest on a wire of our old Christmas lights,
high above any stress from below,
and shaded by trees from the constantly burning sun
that reminds you tha...

It was my fourth birthday,
which I don't remember much of,
except for this –
I had received two dinosaurs,
a T-Rex, and triceratops,
from whom, I can't recall.
The triceratops was my favorite,
even then, I had a predilection
for peaceful grazers
armed with defe...

My favorite photo of you
doesn't have you looking your best,
but it's you at your best.
It's the photo of you taken
on your nephew's wedding day.
You're sitting alone,
slightly battered pink with drink
and hammered by the sun.
You're in a yellow sundress
that h...

For Springpoem

How do you write poems to a poet?
To let the words appear on paper,
or the computer screen, in fact,
so when your eyes absorb the lines,
all the colors, the shapes and the sizes
travel to your neurons, axons and dendrites,
carried by all the ...

We were discussing homes,
and settling down,
I wanted to see the future
paved down with smooth school roads,
and carpools with loud kids,
with afterschool soccer practices.
You, were not opposed to it,
but the idea of committing
to just one safe, flat
future, I...

For the past week,
in the nights,
I have risen from our bed
for some reason or another
as sure as the moon
reflects the sun's day
and shines in awakening
to the darkness
of restless thoughts.

You try to calm me down
from my excitement.
talking to me ...

Your soul does not have to perish
like winter's grey.
Let your grief that is now
wash over you
like the spring rain
that does not judge
but only cleanses away
the past decay.
And in your grief for
departed love, for departed seasons,
for the plain departed,...