PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

To all the single women out there

A true warrior is always armed with three things:
a refreshing beer (we like it),
1000 year old bones (to be problematic),
and the patchouli smell—there’s no such thing as perfection.

He has endorphins coursing through his system,
is a foot and a half long crack in a field of lavender…

Whether you like it or not, we are interested in talking
louder than the scent of wild roses,
riding bikes on up to Rock Ridge,
looking for amnesty.

If I must, I will spend my whole life fighting.
Because every year blooms
from a battered stump that looks as though
it must be dead. Humans are just that: humans.
Move when you touch them.

People who have been hanging out with my monkey
will find out my new favorite feeling in the world:
embracing the sacredness of someone on the radio laughing.

let me touch your skin…
to forget what it was…
I’m starting to lose

…now that I’m f-f-fifty.

* a found poem of recent updates of my Facebook friends. Thanks everyone.

Not Many Things Are This Grand

I dreamt I watched an elephant give birth to 7 babies,
eating a Cobb salad and working on a pantoum.
What makes some of us survive trauma while others
keep drowning? Poetry is nothing
but the half-life fade, a merciful end.
When you lift your 80 pound dog into the tub,
the owl of Minerva spreads its wings,
half-awake, half-asleep and drowning.

Everybody is three years old, is breaking boundaries.
You know you’ll never leave
my adrenaline-fueled screaming, extended middle finger.
You blamed me with the falling of the dusk—a very eloquent thank you
where the “shoulds” and the “wants” (or something worse)
have met the enemy in a swimming hole, drowning in it.

I yelled out my window what I wanted
was a new bunch of poets, a journal of prayer. A brief thing.
My questions were not about the “cloak of invisibility”.

I apologize. More fun to say, “I wrote to a shipwreck”.
The truth is often a river and seldom a rock,
a strange, twilight zone, one half
doesn’t like the other half.

While this is sad & tragic,
a 9-year old girl wishes she was Amish
and in the future will be more careful.
She can’t have Dr. Pepper with dinner,
even on a holiday.

Earlier than we’d anticipated, the two separate again.

* A found poem of recent Facebook status updates of my friends. Thanks everyone!

Lantern Review has finally published their first issue!  Check it! It’s a beautiful website, and I hope the editors remain enthusiastic about their project, as I would love see how the Asian American poetry movement gets documented by them over time. (more…)