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Poems NATALIE LINH BOLDERSTON Fragments of my mother’s homeland underwater Southern Vietnam will be submerged by 2050 – Saigoneer, Oct 2019 Every place has a name for this. Here, it is tâ. n thê ´. A fortune once told me that rain is worth everything and so I knew that it held all we had ever burned – pork skewers, begging letters, hell money, my great-grandmother’s remains, her son’s prepared flesh. In monsoon season, they fused with everything we exhaled. • Once, Vietnamese people were said to be descended from Âu Co’ , a fairy from the mountains, and La. c Long Quân, a dragon from the sea. When their forms touched sand, one hundred children climbed out from black eggs. • When the land disappeared, we poured our ancestors’ ashes into Aquafina bottles, let them live in the ghost of our thirst. • Once, we planted peach trees for Tê ´t, planned to chop and sour the fruit in jars. Once, the sun slipped so low that every peach burst on our palms. 60 The Poetry Review
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Poems We stayed out until our hair singed, watched black strands split into dust on the concrete. • Once, Âu Co’ and Quân spent too long away from home. Quân tried to hold his human shape, but could not stop his tail from growing back. Âu Co’ tried to cut off her wings and bled a typhoon. • Once, a river curdled at the memory of splitting, the toxins it was fed still in the bodies of five generations. In the bombed cities, waves pull apart reconstructions of every holy building. My mother does not cry because she has already lived through this, because home is swept away every minute you’re not there. I hear her voice bend open to red gas, recede into her mother’s toothless murmurs like names heard through snow. When we are afraid, it no longer matters that we never learned to fully understand each other. 61 The Poetry Review

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Poems

NATALIE LINH BOLDERSTON Fragments of my mother’s homeland underwater Southern Vietnam will be submerged by 2050

– Saigoneer, Oct 2019

Every place has a name for this. Here, it is tâ. n thê ´. A fortune once told me that rain is worth everything and so I knew that it held all we had ever burned – pork skewers, begging letters, hell money, my great-grandmother’s remains, her son’s prepared flesh. In monsoon season, they fused with everything we exhaled. • Once, Vietnamese people were said to be descended from Âu Co’ , a fairy from the mountains, and La. c Long Quân, a dragon from the sea. When their forms touched sand, one hundred children climbed out from black eggs. • When the land disappeared, we poured our ancestors’ ashes into Aquafina bottles, let them live in the ghost of our thirst. • Once, we planted peach trees for Tê ´t, planned to chop and sour the fruit in jars. Once, the sun slipped so low that every peach burst on our palms.

60 The Poetry Review

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