Blame
after Janice Mirikitani’s Yea. She Knows.

BY ĐENISE HẠNH HUỲNH

1995
The doctors convince us my grandmother grew cancer in her lungs
because she ran a repair shop in Việt Nam on the River of 9 Dragons.
When she dies, I ask her youngest son where she went.
He tells me her body is still here but her spirit is gone

moved she could be a butterfly
we will not recognize her & she will not remember us
I do not know to ask where her repair shop sat

not far from long range sprays of Agent Orange. At 9, I am too young
to say but chemical warfare studies center U.S. veterans
not refugees not women They say

there is no evidence of Agent Orange fixing fridges in the repair shop
killed her.

2015
In January, I go back to Việt Nam with my white husband. He finally
learns to love bánh xèo but not the hands that shape them. He is afraid
they will steal his money. He cannot speak to anyone except through me.
I thought he was my home because we both grew up in Brooklyn Park;

I realize I do not know where home is anymore. In the April of my 30th
birthday I mark my wrist lines to the hymn of a gilded butterfly
opening her wings I mark my grandmother’s stolen sleep.

By August, I ask my husband for a divorce.

1979
Việt Nam is kicking out colonizers. Being Chinese gets you out
so my mother changes one tone in her last name & her family finds a boat.

Not every sister or brother can go. No one can say if she will come back
to her delta again. By now, the larval instars are swollen but stopped
her dragon river is stolen from blue & only the sea
remains an unbound shade.

an early version of this poem appeared in the 2018 University of Minnesota
Asian American Studies Program Journal