Coke Rant Diaspora Sestina

By Lêđức Trọng

“Tomorrow, at dawn, when day breaks, please, let me be Chinese” — 
I press my hands together, small before a lacquered figure
of Buddha. Mumbling to my left my mother
kneels, praying, maybe, for my good good education,
or, maybe, a better son—still kneeling
on her brocade—a con, maybe, a dog.
 
I’ve been pleading with her, really I’ve been begging her to stop treating me like a dog
but it’s all Chinese
to her. She says a good son lives kneeling
to the cunt he crawled out of, which she means, literally (it saddens me, the lack of a figure
of speech). I cried to Buddha, the sky bore witness, I bent over backward till the day my education
like a liberation tank rolled down the door and left my mother
 
shell-shocked. And so I fled my mother-
land. I crawled instead to the USA like a dog
after what Paulo Freire would call a banking —or is it barking? — education — 
I didn’t go to China, I never learned Chinese,
I forgot to figure
that part out, regardless I was happier crawling all over New England than kneeling
 
and kneeling
in Nanjing and waiting for my mother
to execute. I figure
you know what that means: you Mỹ Lai, you martyr, you, you, you dog — 
Landing in Vermont, I spoke in English to my first Chinese,
and Sinophilia faded by the start of my higher education
 
when COVID struck. Waving my education
goodbye I crawled back to Vietnam kneeling
like a Chinese
in my century of rape and humiliation under my mother’s
rising sun like a starving beat up beat up dog
jolting awake dreaming my penis in her hands collateral to her night terror attacks my Imperial Japanese mother figure
 
whiplashed massacred struck me down rendered my fat in the fire of her forever forever war death tolls figured
on my forehead like serial numbers branded by a foreign education
unerasable oh GOD there is no laser strong enough to blast you when you are a DOG
kneeling kneeling kneeling
licking licking your mother’s
pussy going crazy crazy at it while still a child wishing wishing to one day wake up Chinese

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Coke Rant Diaspora Sonnet

By Lêđức Trọng

​Listen don’t laugh I think I might well be Chinese! don’t laugh I’m going crazy
I travel half a hundred li every fortnight for my Shanghai yu choi
at Great Wall I listen when common jasmine orange fills the silent air
all seven miles of fragrance I cross the bridge for Yunnan noodles I plop the chicken foot
whole in my mouth I close my eyes I imagine crossing the Yellow
River I see ten thousand houses divide the waters from the waters I spit out
the knuckles I swallow the gelatin the essence of chicken the dog the cat the
crescent moon I open my curtain I raise my head to look under the Dunhuang sky
in the effeminate Chengdu lighting I hear sand grains whisper Buddhist meanings
the music of sycamore leaves I pluck pizzicato I know spring does not last forever
after the summer solstice the light powers begin to wane I know impending darkness I remember
some used to wear badges put up lawn signs I’M NOT CHINESE they pulverized them
regardless the Great Wall cashier tells me xiexie I might well be Chinese when they
annihilate me like one

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Lêđức Trọng’s poetry has been published by t’Art, SWERVE, Dream Boy Book Club, and others. Readings of his poems were played at Six Foot Gallery, and Spanish translations of his poems are forthcoming in Rialta.