WEBVTT

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So the new poems I'm writing
are about time travel.

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And yeah.

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OK.

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This isn't a poem about
time travel though.

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[LAUGHTER]

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"Lesson.

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My mother, after mistaking the
rat poison for who knows what,

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has to have her stomach
pumped with charcoal.

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I'm always surprised how
efficiently regret can build

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a machine, a geared thing
pacing the narrow halls

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of your memory.

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'Asian men ain't
shit,' my mother says,

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her voice a loose cork.

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Dan ong cua min khong tot.

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I think about my
father, his temper,

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how my mother blames
him for everything.

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Di di, di di.

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Leave, all you do is leave.

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For years we sat in silence
while she prayed and lit

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candles, asked ancestors
to free me from disease.

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It's not very exciting, really.

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But still I'm surprised when
she turns to me and says

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in a language I cannot
bring myself to remember,

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because your lover is
white, you are forgiven.

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If anything I am a boy inside
my mother's body shoveling coal

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into a screaming red engine."

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