Identity
you find it first in the tones: sắc and huyền brush strokes,
the mother tongue painting Sông Bình Đông,
your parents’ homeland,
with fisherman faces tipped beneath hats
only to lift at rice, cá chiên, rau cải,
but this is the American Midwest—after the Fall—
so it comes with Billy Graham churches,
fructose corn syrup, and a mowed lawn.
in elementary school, the ESL teacher groans
because you are another “one of those fucking kids,”
tells you to throw away those tones,
hold your right hand to your heart.
luckily, you find friends—
with pencils, you show them how to hold chopsticks;
in exchange, they teach you how to eat tamales,
rock a snapback,
raise butterflies, hit the paper trash fadeaway—
“KOBE!” perfect form and shit—
into the trash can twenty feet away,
but because your report card says
at grade level reading proficiency,
you say good-bye to your friends and attend summer school,
participate in Battle of the Books,
complete mathematics books over the summer.
get opened enrolled into the school in “a less dangerous neighborhood.”
this is where you learn how red your blood is on the basketball court pavement
because that one white kid thinks it’s “funny ‘cause you’re a fatass chink.”
but rather than punch back and yell “Revolution!” at the top of your lungs,
you do what any kid would:
bow your head and spit the blood building in your mouth
at the Billy Graham alter
for some racist jokes.
because here, in your homeland,
you’re one of those fucking kids,
Bụi đời
This autumn was especially unforgiving
so I was told
yields had dipped
combines hurled more debris
than crops
you can see it miles on end
on any Iowa interstate
imitating pink cirri
around the early harvest moon
Đi đêm lắm có ngày gặp ma—
But what are mountains
to men
but ghosts summoned
from their own dust?
Tim Thiện Nguyễn is a Vietnamese American scientist whose Ph.D. research interrogates how our genes shape our face in the womb. He is a recipient of a National Institutes of Health F31 fellowship, with parts of his thesis work published in Development. His training is in craniofacial embryology, genetics, gene regulation, and apparently poetry now. He has published through the Iowa Chapbook Prize and bath magg, with work forthcoming in Defunkt Magazine. You may find him doom-scrolling on Twitter/X as @7imng.