You feigning mysterious cool & telling me how you're feigning mysterious cool & I am a sucker for that kind of self-knowledge & I am a sucker for feigners mysterious cool & you didn't know it then or maybe you did but I thought you were pretty great even then even before you were you lover before you even touched me lover I didn't think you were feigning even though you said you were I knew you were really at least a little bit a small part of you was real mysterious cool.
| Of course if you were keeping track you would have realized that I've translated this one differently that I didn't think the other translations were adequate that Removing is better than Stripping & Splitting Apart. | Image of Father going to country of heat & feeling of Father with an ache burrowed deep in his jaw & image of Father with face under fluorescent lamps like a single feather from the firebird & the doctor pulling hard. | |
| The day you told me that you would remove your mask for me the day you told me that really you're a sensitive guy & I knew it was true but you wanted me to know it anyways you wanted me to know you how you fake. | Earth once being flat & a creator coming & rounding it out hands full of sandpaper rough & earth now round & creator pinching that flesh & mounds of red are removed & this hexagram, mountain over earth. | |
| Little girl calling sister Big sister & telling sister Big sister that she has to have it removed it can't be & asking sister Big sister for advice & sister Big sister saying she'd had it done 3 times & it'll be alright. | & I looking from angles & I'm sorry but this can't be good for you all this removal & division & I want this to be a good fortune but you're about to lose so much that can never be replaced & I'm sorry for your loss. | |
| Mother on table of silver & Mother with tubes & screaming & image of me so small image of me 3 pounds & being removed from her belly of blood & later same image of Mother without tubes for more babies. | Little girl playing circus & little girl playing with q-tips but only one & only one is needed & little girl in an ambulance & little girl not remembering anything & a scar behind little girl's ear from a busted drum. | |
| You having forgotten instructions & not able to remove old ways of reading & I needing to remind you again to read bottom up & you hopefully being able to remember this time because up to down is so much easier. | The lover before you, Adam, I'm calling him Adam, & Adam complaining about it & saying how it makes him feel uncomfortable there & Adam & I going for Italian food afterwards & I not remembering any details. | |
| Leaving then coming to epiphany is forgetting natural response to stimulus like sugar like bitter coffee needing something sweet to bring the bitter of flavor like Father telling me how to drink when I come home. | Image of Father walking out of airplane into country of heat country not my own but country his own after decades of forgotten after wanting so much & then returning to a place no longer home place unrecognizable. | |
| Thunder splitting open earth, a robotic drill through dirt, not really removing anything, just making a hole a cylinder with grooves from top straight down to bottom, leaving indentation of thought a memory staying. | Return: point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to point a to a a a point to a point to a point to point a to point | |
| The day we both entered and exited an aeroplane and re-entered the city of heat. The day progenitors touched our embraces with impossible expectations. The day we lovers went to our separate homes alone. | She said, the great poetess said in a room full of people, she said, As long as you don't interrupt the text, you won't make the readers uncomfortable. The room sighed very uncomfortable with ideas of returning. | |
| Image of Mother skin blackened like catfish from chemo & hands thin bones lacking any flesh returning home from work from treatment from sadness to cook dinner & I don't see because I'm hidden in my room. | Patterned immigration in the sky, perhaps it's the smell that brings them back to the corner under the awning, a smell full of nectar that brings yellow canaries to spring for our Ari to catch & share with us a reward | |
Father telling me that I can't just drink coffee black like that that I need to eat something a little sweet just a little & me training tongue to like bitter & me having taken cream & sugar for so long & Father asking if it's too strong & me saying no I like it & Father smiling without one tooth & me looking away & I've just returned home & I've just seen Father missing a tooth & him giving me candy & me looking away & me loving him but not looking at him without tooth.
& I say I didn't do anything & you say That's my whole point you never do anything you're always the innocent one & I'm always the asshole & I say I never called you an asshole except that one time I was really pissed & you say I'm tired of being the asshole I'm tired of starting all the fights & I say & that's my fault how & you say You need to push me to be better like I push you & I say I don't like confrontation & you say I don't like you being a little girl & I am silent.
Mother & Father being good Catholic martyrs & Mother & Father going to church every Sunday & Father building pieces of church in our backyard & Father back then with hands so strong & even now that Father is weak Father still building with numb fingers & Mother & Father both sick & Mother with cancer eating & shitting & Father walking slowly & they are guilty of many things but sickness still inside them & they're innocent of many things & sickness remains inside
Megan & roommates standing & crying like they didn't know like they were innocent & of course I knew it was wrong & of course I deserved it but them roommates they called the police & I didn't know & I buying books & I coming home to find the police & them roommates crying like they were innocent & the police taking me in handcuffs & I crying like I was guilty & then the flea bath & then the dominoes & then the record with my name on it never innocent again.
| This fortune being an odd fortune & that the translators translating telling me how innocent often befall misfortune & I not getting it but trying to translate authentic to authenticate texts of straight & broken lines. | The first day you held my hand I thought I was shot full of adrenaline like when I was stung by a bee & an allergic reaction with throat swelled tight & I almost died & our then innocent love that's what it felt like. | |
| Orange ringtailed lemur of a cat being excited by water & sticking first paw then head into it & preferring faucets to bath tubs but preferring even more than preferring it when you water plants & he gets splashed. | Mother always with the look the look being a slight frown & wrinkles on skin & her from her mouth a sound that resembles tsk tsk but much more than that a sound that to my ears is torture telling me I am bad. | |
Not wanting to look guilty not wanting Mother & Father to think poorly of me of you of us lovers & our small apartment & our cats & our clutter & us lovers trying to act not guilty & them parents looking with judgment & Mother making her sound that sound that hurts & Father taking out his pipe to smoke & him Father moving slowly with small bobbles & my hand reaching out a steel beam to hold onto & Mother smiling to see him Father & me daughter holding us together.
Lily Hoang is the author of Parabola (Chiasmus Press, Fall 2007, winner of the Chiasmus Press First Book Contest) and Changing (Fairy Tale Review Press, Fall 2008). Her writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Quarter After Eight, and the Fairy Tale Review. She received her MFA from the University of Notre Dame last spring.