So the new poems I'm writing are about time travel.
And yeah.
OK.
This isn't a poem about time travel though.
[LAUGHTER]
"Lesson.
My mother, after mistaking the rat poison for who knows what,
has to have her stomach pumped with charcoal.
I'm always surprised how efficiently regret can build
a machine, a geared thing pacing the narrow halls
of your memory.
'Asian men ain't shit,' my mother says,
her voice a loose cork.
Dan ong cua min khong tot.
I think about my father, his temper,
how my mother blames him for everything.
Di di, di di.
Leave, all you do is leave.
For years we sat in silence while she prayed and lit
candles, asked ancestors to free me from disease.
It's not very exciting, really.
But still I'm surprised when she turns to me and says
in a language I cannot bring myself to remember,
because your lover is white, you are forgiven.
If anything I am a boy inside my mother's body shoveling coal
into a screaming red engine."