PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

About Workshop Poems: These are drafts I’m revising. One a month. Please feel free to comment. And check back in throughout the month to see how I’ve progressed with it.

January 2010 original:

Brother(s)

We had our separate twin beds, sharing the room
with purple plush bears and the thundering monsters
we named from under our covers at night.
With satisfied stomachs of rice, my voice carried the both of us
into scarlet, clovered dreaming.

( I did not know)

Through our window, the dual aroma of lilac and mint slippered in
as firebugs fall down, petite stars
gilding the dusk of our game, between blue pine
and heaven, between
(I give up) and ollie oxen.

(what have we got to get her?)(we got a name.)

Yet I knew. The cinema’s flickering told it this way:
hearts will cleave in half (or thirds),
portions of which are no longer ours to hold.
I knew it this way: teddy bears grow up, fall apart.
The tales you asked from me ended like this: Together.

(we determine the inkblot’s fold)

Namesharing, our last halves equal (beginning the same).
I hurled my books at you and still you broke no ribs.
I abandoned you to the streets, yet homeward still.
Still. Homeward still. Still, my heart
is cleaving.

Working revision copy:

Brother(s)

We had our separate twin beds, sharing the room
with purple plush bears and the thundering monsters
we named from under our covers at night.
With satisfied stomachs of rice, my voice carried the both of us
into scarlet, clovered dreaming.

( I did not know)

Through our window, the dual aroma of lilac and mint slippered in
as firebugs fall fell down, petite stars
gildinggilded the dusk of our game, between blue pine
and heaven, between
(I give up) and ollie oxen.

(what have we got to get her?)(we got a name.)

Yet I knew. The cinema’s flickering told it this way:
hearts will cleave in half (or thirds),
portions of which are no longer ours to hold.
I knew it this way: teddy bears grow up, fall apart.
The tales you asked from me ended like this: Together.

(we determine the inkblot’s fold)

Namesharing, our last halves equal (beginning the same).
I hurled my books at you and still you broke no ribs.
I abandoned you to the streets, yet homeward still.
Still. Homeward still. Still, my heart
is cleaving.

New Version:

[check back later]

girl on the platform meditating

Seems like ages ago that I wrote this poem, and just as long that Jennifer Karmin put it into action as part of her “Walking Poems” project in Chicago.  It’s recently published on How2.  Check it out.

I know I’ve grown so much as a poet since the writing and submission of this poem, but it still retains sentimental value for me.  I wrote during my brief little tour of New York City in January of 2006.  A country girl from Vermont in the big City for a weekend, I sent short emails home to my friends of my first impressions:

Finally got a taste of a real chocolate souflee, which I'd been dreaming 
about since the dessert party this summer, where it was noticably absent 
from the menu...found myself in an apartment with two guys playing Go, and a 
woman about to leave for Bejing early the next morning.

the smell of take out lingering in elevator carriages, the sounds of 
unidentifiable languages, people so familiar yet not my own. I could walk a 
long time down these hard gray streets before I needed rest. Bent pizza 
boxes, posters weathering off the walls, jewel-colored lamp shades in the 
park, the ghost of myself in the windows I walk past. So much tactile 
sensory information.

I had taken the trip to New York to read at a Kundiman-sponsored event at Verlaine.  I stayed with another Kundiman fellow, Rona Luo.  I had drinks at the Telephone Bar, where fellow Kundis were reading.  We went to Chinatown for dinner and ice creams.

I was broke and dreamy-eyed.  I had been practicing daily meditations on gratitude and love.  And as I waited for the train, I closed my eyes…

Slept in, per Rona's suggestion. Squatted on the station platform and 
meditated in the sun. Gorgeous no jacket day. Perused bookshops, killing 
time before lunch. Mongolian pepper steak, halo halo, Thai iced tea, gossip 
and poetry shop talk with one of the most beautiful women I know.What do I 
want? Someone who is comfortable in his body, and who can cherish mine. We 
ate next to fish the size of my head in their blue tank.

Oh, how young and dreamy I was then.  And in love with every new experience!

The luggage is in the car, trunk packed
with boxes and bags like building blocks,
as if leaving was just another game,
this turn toward the open road.
If we were in first grade and this was “house,”
I would be departing for work, you
the library. And after the long recess
apart, we’d meet lips chastely, having the promise
of our whole lives together
to get it right. If this were play,
I’d say to you, kiss the kids for me–I’ll be late,
again. I’d disappear around the bookcase,
hide in my pretend office, distract myself
with colorful picture books, dial a toy phone
to my secretary and look out the window at the rain, the birds.
If I hadn’t forgotten, I’d return to you
whom I hardly know, and you’d be there
on the flowered rug in your socks, reconstructing
the wooden pieces we’d built together, adding rooms.
In practice, we never fought–my words never bore knives
or chased you. I never sat at bars unraveling myself
to strangers, to women who defied lovely. You never sulked
in a nightshirt, overspent. You never smacked
a swath of your child’s skin, made it burn.
If we’d have understood the purpose
of a door, the reasons we return to open it,
the step into devotion, my car would not steer away.
You would not stand so tall, my final backward glance.

a mountain grew out of the shapeless river
we drank the birds like madness
their feathers all manner of chalk
we scribbled those dreams
the shadows of them on our backs
branded ourselves with our made-up
dead languages we had no names for
the months fermented, slid
down our throats bitter, salted
we walked miles of purple
to where our feet could never take us
our words flew like hungry spear, crackled
in the mute slideshow of lightening bugs
we crowned each other holy
wrote wreaths of columbine and clover
rolled into morning the honey
marrow of living with blank paper hearts

in the Meadows, they dipped their bony heads
to the grass and pulled them by roots
into their warm pink mouths

they were black and white and they mooed
an inconsistent chorus and they spilled
from under the red eaves, lazy sun bathers

the herd in their stanchions milked
by hands that had also thrown hay
and smoothed their high splotched hides

they were black and white and they moved
like slow drunks in search of a seat
they huddled in dots along the Meadows

and they steamed in the evening chill
where they would still spot the fields
had the trucks not come to empty the farm

The Commons, February 2007