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THE WRITERS POST (ISSN: 1527-5467) VOLUME 12 NUMBER 2 JUL 2010
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DIEP
TRUNG HA
___________________________________________ a
poem by DIEP TRUNG HA Facing It, Again (inspired
by Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Facing It”) … dedicated to those who didn’t make it
… Yusef, you’re not alone, but my face doesn’t fade like your black face fades, hiding inside the black granite. My face can’t hide ─ I am not inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. You found Andrew Johnson. I keep searching. Where’s the name Lê Đức Nam? I remember. He got married right after Thủ Đức, not his place of choice, only to leave behind a young widow, with child. Where’s the name Lý thị Lan? I remember reading about her: old enough to leave for the rough jungle, only never to exit it. You go down the 58,022 names. I still look for the other 1,284,000 names ─ names like Lan and names like Nam. Another face, like my face, under a thin cloud of white hair, moves slowly across the black wall. I turn, but he’s gone. I face it, again. A helicopter flies across. I see no black smoke, only the names written on it. Yusef, you’re not alone. I too want to face it, the black granite with the names spelling the faces like the face facing me facing the black mirror. DIEP TRUNG
HA The Writers Post &
literature-in-translation, founded 1999,
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