for dad
by Nguyen Do

the two apple trees we planted last summer are busy bearing fruit now
the way aspens bear their shadows
this evening I’m relaxing in my own garden, sipping beer
but my heart is suddenly wounded:
you’re no longer here to distinguish sun from rain

just as we were leaving you, you suddenly woke up
the vagueness of your voice came from the deep endlessness
of thirty years ago:
“you should be leaving me soon for less heat”
tears came quickly into our eyes
now, daddy, I’m sitting here in your shade!

at this moment it’s like taking the first step in writing a poem
on an evening when the barges are whistling
where the porters—mom, dad, and my village neighbors—
were bending their backs to carry the goods
raising kids who’re like corn and cassavas, struggling to grow up
parents are like the La River, streaming their whole lives
then finally drained of the last drop, the last twist

sometimes I touch the arecas in our old garden home
their bodies of a thousand wrinkles, asking me
if I want also to talk to tangerines and soursops
wanting badly to do so but then having nothing to say. . .

here on this summer morning, birds sing and squabble for their food
I thought somebody called, I woke up
these days I’m so scared by any phone’s ring
and the moonlight is like the moon that night my dad rafted
on the La River, his charcoal face soaring in the moon’s yellow light
as, in extreme misery, he floated his family home from the forest
on the bamboo raft they lived on.
his country and his own fate were divided in half
the summer moon flat and thoughtful

I once visited a country cemetery with you in the Lao wind pouring heat
but I was trembling with cold when we passed my grandparents’ graves
you pointed to two empty grave plots next to them
you said you bought them to prepare for your own death and mom’s
you talked easily as you put more rice in our little clay pot
making a tiny bowl of congee in that long winter of starvation
in our country
dad, you still look after us, even though your fate’s boat has forever gone
          into the horizon

Oakley Jun 10-11, 2014

Notes: 
After the Geneva Conference of 1954, my father, a Viet Minh anti-colonial soldier against the French, had to relocate north of the 17^th Parallel even though he was born in the southern province of Quang Tri, where his mother and siblings still resided. Thus, for 21 years, until 1975, his heart was divided in half.

The wind that comes from Laos into central Vietnam. Called a “Lao wind,” it is very hot and humid in summer.

by James Cagney

Aunt Pearl's grass appears painted,
each blade perfectly ripe, bleeding
if pinched between your fingernails. 
Her dog, named Rat by a granddaughter
for obvious reasons, darts a stray mark
of ink across the lawn.  He stops at his water
dish, a snow globe of sand, to slap
down the liquid.  From a distance,
he appears to be a curly black wig,
his tongue a perfect orange slice.

The heat is a curse in Bakersfield;
worrisome and mischievous as a mad
fly, even coaxing my mother into
shorts.  It is a heat that hugs you,
sticks and burns.  It is a heat that
settles over you like ash and is cured
only by watermelon and lemon popsicles.

Night comes slowly as if the sky
were being peeled in long strips
of blue banana skin.  One at a time
the stars remove their shirts
revealing their random white bodies;
tiny stones littering a beach of black
sand.  In the cooling darkness,
the sidewalks surrender tortured
memories of heat and mimic hot coals.

Uncle Jerry sits on the cement porch.
The sky above him ripens to a deep
plum color as he unscrews a story
from a bottle and moths dance
their suicidal dance for the flickering
porch light which, at this moment,
is brighter and hotter than the sun.

by Brynn Saito

Woman Warrior is thinking about justice.
The moon out
and climbing the sky
reminding her of the slow light of progress.
Clocks line the banks of the frozen river.
They conduct time
tall and ticking while the river salutes the mystery
of ice. She skates across it
with a jar of honey
stacked on another jar of honey
stacked on another.
One hundred years later
and still she is skating, descended from the dark
river of women—women loving men
men loving bottled love
love like a cradle of needles—
mending, mending, mending.

by Gail Newman

War. The man face down in the snow is my father.
Chest, legs, body as if asleep in snow. He hears the silent
woods, the slight shiver of ice forming on branches.
The cry of a crow, crunch of boots, artillery fire, moans.
Ally planes overhead, crush of metal, shouts.
He imagines his mother lies down beside him, smoothes
his hair. The trees turn over and sigh, sleepers or lovers
arms twined around one another for comfort.
Something in the world must love him.
Must want him alive-his hands, the soles of his feet,
the veins in his neck, the roots of his hair.
He wants to live so he feigns death. For three days
unmoving in the snow, his bones brittle as hatred,
so cold he could break.

by Cintia Santana

Dear B,

Never the bride.
Never been better.
Nor best. A burden

                        is nothing like a bird.

A bus
          become a boy.

                          Little Boy.

                                     A boy become a bomb.

Let bygones be.
Let bygones be.

Breath
          is but borrowed,

brief.
     And the body betrays

                                     because you be:

burrow.

          Bury

                          the black in the berry.

          Bury

                          the bumble in the bee.

Bless the bean.
Bless the butter
and the cup.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum’s exhibition program is supported by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.