Flickering Beside Life
By Phan Tan Hai
I came here to sit through Mondays,
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays,
Saturdays, Sundays—sweating through
a full week, in the open-air market
of sky and earth, the market of life.
People I know pass by, but I pretend
they’re strangers. I scoop handfuls of words,
spread them across paper, pour out
a whole can of ink to lay out my wares.
Turning back, I scold my child—
“Sit still, let your father perform
a little magic to earn money,
then I’ll take you to see
a Jackie Chan movie.”
Before my eyes, people pass—
a man walking by, a woman walking back—
and here I am scratching my head,
fumbling with English letters,
emptying my pockets, scraping my mind
to juggle the i’s and t’s,
hoping only to earn enough
to get through the day,
still anxious about tomorrow
when the landlord knocks
demanding rent, and I still haven’t earned
enough to pay for my child’s summer school.
Driving him to class in the morning,
seeing gang symbols painted
across the front of the house,
I force a smile at the shaved-head
Mexican boys on the street,
hoping each night we return
without trouble, yet fearing
my child will grow up
and fall in with the wrong crowd—
used to the Friday and Saturday nights
of pounding music in the neighborhood,
guitars, singing, stomping feet,
the loud laughter of Mexican youth.
I pat my child’s head—
“Study hard, grow fast,
so we can leave this place early.
Heaven help you,
don’t wander like your father,
lost and foolish all his life.”
Later I hope to teach him
the temple’s martial art—
the mud-buffalo crossing rivers,
the clay-buffalo crossing seas—
waiting for earth to crumble
and mud to dissolve,
never daring to hope
for anything more in this world.
At night I play with him,
teaching him to read—
here the letter t, there the letter b,
here the letter v, there the letter p.
I beg him to learn enough
to read the wrinkled letters
sent from uncles and aunts back home.
“Don’t ask why the letters
from that faraway sky
never carry good news,
why the paper never turns
the color of paper,
why the ink is always purple,
why the corner always shows an airplane,
why the stamps cost thousands,
why the postscript
is always asking for money,
and why the stories
are never beautiful.”
Let me teach you to squint,
to see which words are happy,
which are sad,
to see who stands behind the letters.
But why does my heart still ache
like the day I first left home?
On Saturday afternoons
I go sit by the ocean,
looking far, far away,
and still I see, still I hear,
still I feel the laughter and crying
of the children back home—
as if they were still young,
while I here have aged
a hundred years.
I see them silent, burdened,
pedaling to the market each day,
their shirts torn at the shoulders,
their bowls never full.
Each evening they still trust
in heaven and Buddha,
believing the old stories
of a world gone astray—
and must endure
the full measure of a human life.
The midnight rains of Saigon—
who knows they still wet
the window frames of Orange County,
who knows they still chill
my bones on this side of the sky.
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