Postcard 2: For My Dad, Kha Tran. {poetry}
{source}
My dad escaped Vietnam in 1975 with four friends on a small boat.
On their second day at sea, their boat sank and they were kept afloat by holding on to one of its wooden panels. Fortunately, a Japanese cargo ship found them that afternoon and brought them on board. He spent the next six months in a refugee camp in Malaysia, followed by two years in a refugee camp in Japan.
In Okinawa, my dad sent letters and photographs home to his family in Nha Trang, but the Vietnamese government kept them from being delivered. It wasn’t until over a year later when my dad’s friend had seen a photograph of him at the postman’s home that he knew my dad was still alive.
My dad’s friend went and told my grandma, aunts and uncles about the photo, which made them walk over to the postman’s house to ask for the photo.
The postman made them promise to keep it a secret and handed over several letters and accompanying photos that my dad had been sending home to Nha Trang ever since he arrived in Okinawa. From there, he was able to set up phone calls with the family back home.
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that around 400,000 Vietnamese people died at sea trying to escape their homeland. My dad was one of the fortunate ones to have made it safely to the refugee camps. In 1978, he and his four friends were sponsored by a church on East Lake Street to come to Minneapolis, MN.
I dedicate this poem, and many of my writings, to him and my mother for all the sacrifices they made for me to be the proud Asian-American I am today. Thank you for the boundless love you’ve shown me my whole life, I am truly nothing without you!
***
Story goes that we walked
down the streets of Saigon
as the city was falling
and when the motorcycles stopped
running and the markets closed
we walked through them
never born at all
After the war
the city stopped dreaming
and when our bodies rested
the earth laid itself
across our caskets
and those the bombs
turned dust again
orbit around her cerulean revolve
like ghosts leaving a shell
like photo-boxes emptying in reverse
When we floated with the buildings
we became a city of ashes
where the streetlights go ghost
where we see dust from 1975
and America sees confetti
We no longer speak our city’s name;
to pronounce a name
the war soon pronounces her dead
and when the sun rises
the dirt takes another daughter captive
As we watch our city in ruins and still we remain passive
they mispell genocide like w.a.r.
and still we remain silent
As another yellow man is underground
and now he’s my ancestor
another yellow woman becomes dust and soon she’ll be a constellation
another yellow boy has his youth captured in celluloid
and now he is endless
And I am endless nameless
the last name of an only son
living out the last words of our dying language
whispering peace mantras
with the same mouth
I keep the razorblade in
So deconstruct me
like an island off the mainland
disconnected from my hometown
like coordinates with no end-points
just star lines falling to the ocean
Follow me, before the sunrise,
and let’s go anywhere,
where we can watch the city lights
go out one by one
where the stars fade the same
and the city lights spread to the sky
until blue becomes its own city
Let’s stand on the beaches
of these ruins
like the shores of a
broken orange planet
the way we did the night
we left Nha Trang
kept afloat because we are energy
and we can’t be destroyed anymore
So this city and you and I
we all just float on
hovering like glass bottles
and our bodies are love letters
This is our story
and tonight is our last chance to tell it
so listen
listen to the jasmine wind
tonight it sounds like our names.
***
Tu the Judoka is a spoken word artist living in Midtown Minneapolis. A first-generation Asian-American of Cantonese ethnicity, his family came to the United States after escaping the Vietnam War. He represented MN at the 2017 and 2019 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slams. Tu holds the rank shodan in judo and also a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He speaks four languages (Cantonese, Vietnamese, English, and Dutch) and studied abroad in the Netherlands during his undergrad. His favorite foods are sushi and poke bowls. He loves Sega Dreamcast and lays the smackdown on Jet Grind Radio.
***
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