Thuy Hang’s work sends you reeling, unhinges you a bit from sense and logic, as real poetry should. The physical world of these poems can be sharp as metal and claustrophobic, violent at times. But her characters possess a sensual power that flies in the face of rigidity, stagnancy, and death. They are mystics and visionaries who step freely from one world to another – or they simply inhabit both worlds simultaneously. For those characters who have been quarantined, or who are trapped—because of illness, madness, war—the boundaries between real and imaginary, past and present, cease to exist. In “sickness and bread” a patient on her sickbed finds that she has become the black bread in the spitting fireplace: I puff up like firewood flaring inside the oven, the bread breaks, blackish* _________________ * slices of bread burnt brown inside The speakers of Thuy Hang’s poems are also sultry at times, impudent and bold. They are wanderers by choice, women who breathe smoke, and who are unafraid of their own sexual power. They also understand the duality of love and sexuality, how these forces can create but just as easily destroy: I like to hurl myself any time onto new unknown women and flounder in / perpetuating darkness / I am the little lover who leaves the most striking and destructive marks But sometimes the people in these poems, in spite of all their mystery, just want what the rest of us want. They long openly to be held and remembered. And this longing is made even more profound by the poet’s acute sense of impermance and exile, a sadness that permeates all of her work. It is in these moments when I love her poems best. you should put me away into any place possible. if disappearance really happens and I suddenly turn into air, you should go back to this place, open the door to absorb all of me into your lungs. - Claire Barnard ________________________________________________________________________
sickness & bread behind my sick bed holy foxes furiously challenge each other to spray urines on the wall, manufacturing his face, x dark and crude round and long x is laughing at someone or x is chewing on a piece of black bread it’s already the eighth week that I have been ill the severed arm the devilled piss drop into a metal container they bind a knife and garlic cloves to my armpits to fight away x I am silent dull-witted I spit at x’s pale while and withered face the sick days the slimy spittles flow around the sole of my shoes force themselves into the sole of my feet I puff up like firewood flaring inside the oven, the bread breaks, blackish* _________________ * slices of bread burnt brown inside scattered underneath x crosses the ground crushes them further I keep on poppingly explode inside the roasting pit x ignores these displays** occurring behind him the slaughterhouse blazing all of me that spews out is against x _____ ** are they dancing suggestively, stamping the floor, marking me through x, the devil comes closer, and takes a look at me, takes a look at me (don’t come to the window to watch my nerves shrink here in the furnace who sliced me and threw me on the grate?) gaylord’s T3, 28/12/2004 evening translated by Nguyễn Đức Nguyên
________________________________________________________________________ [words] - they are also a layer of the powder of the illusory
over the swamp, by a manifest with some lingeringness, she says I am a scale, I can hold many emotions at once because I am guided by the constellation of Venus so I am very wild in love, I am the most amorous among the 12 zodiac signs I like to hurl myself any time onto new unknown women and flounder in perpetuating darkness I am the little lover who leaves the most striking and destructive marks destructive, vanishing, flirtatious are very correct words about me with the experience of a seasoned interpreter, she continues to elaborate, in the extending and out-spreading heat of September on the deserted field, same story as in History of a Traveler, I will walk as a ghost, drifting like a curlew, sedimenting like ships I will no longer take great care brushing my eyelashes, I will cook air to liquid in a city dweller’s manner, or I will appear in the form of a bouquet of daisies in Saigon around the year 75 I will seduce people whose sexual orientation originates from an addiction to the beautiful, the romantic, and admiration for any individual, regardless of their gender or I will be the cause for men to suddenly wear women’s shirts, make up and mingle brilliantly under the sun but at the same time I will receive countless curses from most hetero classes, because I am the very acting chemical, a special chemical that can weaken their ovaries and reduce their sperm counts with footsteps like ghosts slowly marching over swamplands, I will exterminate all eggs by insects and manage to dissolve the seriousness of the official writers and all the art critics who are sitting glistening on TV then still secure in that chair of celibacy, over the reverberating hymns, in a steady rhythm, with a voice fluctuating and waning due to heart congestion, she guesses the rest: in this year, if I cannot pack up and jump on a trip, or fly on my own from the ground to a land faraway in July or August, I will disappear without reason like a scent being love-crazed, then I will only be a set of empty clothes, really turning into an outline incapable of holding someone inside, and I will leave a message for the person who is sitting here guessing my fate that, along with the bad stars converging in my temple of the self which are forcing me to become a constant lover, you should put me away into any place possible. if disappearance really happens and I suddenly turn into air, you should go back to this place, open the door to absorb all of me into your lungs, because here: remote, cafe, flowers almost dead, my dwindling away, alcohol, books, music, paper, pens, unfinished paintings with deadly silent colors: with the beautiful life, the scent of this place is unforgettable. -studio g. Saturday, April 4, 2009- 6:30PM . translated by Lê Đình Nhất Lang ________________________________________________________________________ [words] - original version a window, between the rails, unsearched, unseen: the one being silent under the bookshelves 1. stinky dirty clogging permission, guarantee, authorization wild, strange, stubborn, a mad man . . . lurching, meandering, frail, irritated bed-divan (fox holes) lie down, lie straight down, express, conceal, hide, escape cannot see (refrained, hooked, pinned) a threat clouds from the mountain top, in the storm, I still try to explain they-command, control (the rain pours down, erodes and blows away entire tents, underneath, human bodies buried deep in the ground) pulling, dragging, drifting, limping a harrow, a sled, a four-horse carriage, hoofs scraping cannot see. still cannot see a thing. I don’t do it. (nearest: the separation of a row of trees from its book, to make a stranger want to wear men’s shirts...) it sticks, not dried yet, worn out, ragged, shabby top soil, peat, paved with lumps of earth, bobbing between rails O, humankind 2. still cannot see (nearest words: darken, seem sad gloomy darkness, appear hazy . . . ) many folding hems cannot see (get real close, beyond the tunnel, surface, closer: (poetry)-cruel, whither) cannot see (the gray color of the mountain range, shackled for life) cannot see (mind too agitated, obstructed, hiccupping) cannot see (guts, narrow underground passage, just thinking about this place sinks me into contemplations, a delta, the old days feline entrails: feel the way, destroy from inside, dig, break) stinking, inducing nausea and the measles, itch, and they-speak softly, suggest vaguely . . . they-sing lullabies, calming the waves, lying down, tranquil they-smaller, fewer, whisper, tinier, less, not enough in number, eliminate they, have removed angry words, dew drops, water, shadow, this hand, exile, civility, crystals, salted water, street names, rain on the roof, a house full of yellow powder, memory there, the process of shrinking, bone displacing, neck breaking cure, restore it, compensate, remake objects lost, displaced, robbed, paid with a price organic fertilizer, ugly objects, mixed up, no dumping holes, not a local person, dirty, disrupting war, fight back, day after day (they try to push tiny flowers into an old jar and let water rot them, they hide behind the wardrobe and fall asleep for months and years, they warm themselves up by letting spiders crawl around them, they drop their hairs into a basin and let their scents fade, they cannot remember what have just shaken and nibbled) until [Sunday, January 11, 2009, 10pm].
translated by Lê Đình Nhất Lang ________________________________________________________________________ [the words] - unsearchable over the telephone she said, I believe in determinism, and I am the 7th symbol of the zodiac- Libra constellation makes me so seductive in love and at night, facing the wide open window, when the yellow light projects the black pine on the other side of the house shadow of strange sceneries - softly she continued, in her thought: in the state of leakage, astir- I am the hybrid of two genders, with self-determination and not in the style of an educator, I will attack and heighten the disorder, indisposition- so that she might get hurt, enraged and with oblivion, she imagines herself living in the ruined and painful era arisen from memory- but in this bipolar state - she comes closest to me and with the letters, the astrology, the admonishment, she says I’m obliged to toss a coin to make a decision, whether I must definitely argue with mankind, with the maple wood stick, I have whipped my arms incessantly these afternoons they might be the powder of the illusory, for me to continue to tolerate their saying that I am self-isolated, abnormal, and have built a wall to fence off myself, I am rooted to one spot but immeasurably wicked or I see (poetry)-enemy, become poisonous (for someone) and through the Libra constellation (with a monotonous voice she goes on) my being madly in love does not result from adrenal stimulation, or I am made of antiseptic tablets or disinfectant solution with the same concentration, I can neither copy others holding onto burdens nor being oppressed to abdominal pain, the more unlikely that I have recently become obsessed like the boats fleeting in the ocean with a group of tattered people forced to leave their old land in the years since 1975 she (stops for a while to think, seeming motionless for a while then continues, coherently, in an assertive voice): I, am the word unsearched, unsearchable I, am the kind not yet located on the map, nor discovered in the encyclopedia or reference book written specifically for obsessive compulsive disorder but briefly and casually said: I am like a simple circle drawn by kids on their sketchbooks, then I stand up and walk away like a blurred pencil contour, and then perhaps, as a determinist, I will not show up in the records and definitions in anyone’s notebook, but I will be retained by memory, (suddenly from the other end of the phone line her voice drops to a whisper) “… like mine, you will be kept in these last days of winter, as the season coming to closure, you will only appear in my body ache, every morning having breakfast with stomachache I will have thought that you are sitting in there, and my son, sitting across at the time, will have said, let’s eat mom, don’t be sad” Thursday, March 19, 2009. 6pm translated by Đặng Thơ Thơ ________________________________________________________________________