 My mother and my father were refugees and I haven't read from This collection and quite some time because it's not really relevant relevant I tend to write about dogs and my mother and obscene ways and And this is you know, this was me being serious in my first thesis. So oh, I should This is how I'm all the time. I'm just like a basket case when I'm reading. Okay Usually I'm drunk and now I can't get drunk. So So now I ramble Okay, there we go A primary color reach. Thanks to him. Okay So again, my parents are refugees. I'm Vietnamese and I'm only reading this because for some reason it seems timely I will not for some reason. We all know why it's timely. Okay a Primary color reach. Oh, and it looks like this. So they're snippets So think of them as little snapshots My mother wears a paper hat a boat flipped upside down folded from newspaper I want to say it looks good on her, but it doesn't it's too big and it falls off and I call this Symbolism I write a story with my mother and she's floating on a raft a boat. She insists but barely I Built her a story with a frame one size too small and so shallow at streams to curve above the water It's always threatening to capsize There's a picture of my mother standing near Niagara Falls. It's a good picture. She's good-looking It's her honeymoon and she's in her late 30s. Her hair is curled and the photo is circa 1977 she's dressed in a beige polyester suit a small scarf tied around her neck whips up Laps like a current to her chin the force of the water falling flickers the hem of her pants The scarf is probably polyester too. I mentioned this fabric only because it's cheap and despite that it shimmers like water can I Find myself referring to water whenever I talk about her bobbing in an expanse unending and eternal a point where everything is blue and breaking There is breaking near a boat Water dribbles in and people are vomiting crudely over the edge taking their time The boat is old skin peels the mind loses to insomnia the sweat of worry Anxiety floating through an indecipherable direction My mother's headache splits between the eyes and she cannot see the end to the circumference of blue water on blue sky And always the distance trembles together with the undulating heat of the horizon Eternity is blue an infinite breaking and swelling and I can see her arms waving from a pile of bodies heaped in fatigue Water can wear anything down Water breaks against the hull Splits apart and recedes a woman's water breaks and her legs slit open and she feels like she's ripped all the way to the Mouth where she's trying not to scream Everyone's afraid they'll die if she says anything, but then a baby Gray and marbled they toss this stillborn overboard and from afar they can see the eyeless infant Flapping through the clouds its long arms waving the umbilical curls from the belly and vanishes to the Sun I'm not on the boat The boat disappeared 40 years before I was born Bits of it are floating somewhere tipping over with people My mother her brother and 823,000 people fall out of it, and I don't know what to do with them stroke My mother wants me to learn to swim urgently. She never knew how she's afraid I would become like her afraid of water and surrounded by it So I went to the YMCA and they pushed me in I Choke on chlorine my throat burns. I hate them. I don't want to go back the next day But I do it I do it until my mother sees me swim laps I say the backstroke is fun, but even in the heated pool the water is cold Submerged nothing sounds louder than your lungs or as lonely At least I like my bathing suit. It's blue. It sparkles. It surrounds me. I Imagine I'm skipping I imagine her apology to her mother and her father for never seeing them again Imagine her hunched forward and holding on to the ridge of the boat as she does to a framed picture of her dead parents in our living room And then there's like more, but you know why okay? I'm going on to more fun stuff. Thank you Yeah, oh, yeah, right. Thank you. Yeah, right, okay Sorry, I'm I'm always okay Um, yeah so in memory of As the title in memory of the mind bends to the body in the slightest ways I think of you I think of you in the oblique moments when I am tired and there's nothing but the day ending The lights turned off and the soft sound of the heater humming and enduring string of reminders The rest is lost, but the body is still warm still continuous And and now we're going to my more funny ones So I have a whole bunch of dog poems and then a dog mother poem But I'm not gonna okay joy my dog licks his anus. Oh, I have two dogs and I love them very much, but Joy my dog licks his anus my dog licks his anus in profound delight a fresh anus Opening and closing as if mouth-to-mouth he connects himself Presses his head low to the light of a pale moon the powerful warm wind his tongue a wild dancer I just do that all the time because I like saying all those words together and how obscene they are And I like how they sound to Asiany. I know that's like not good thing to say because but I'm Asian and I can say it so You know Okay, private parts. This is always a crowd favorite private parts. I tell my mother she smells Her vagina specifically and could she crack the window and we all know it's hot, right? So and could she crack the window so that I could get some fresh air in the backseat? And also could they turn up the radio because I love this song Blink 182 is like so cool Naturally my stepdad the driver turns quiet. He doesn't adjust the volume in our new 1999 super wagon his foot is a little hard with breaking and at the next light There's a noticeable lurch after a few seconds my mother yanks at her seat belt for slack turns to face me in the back seat and gets Good look you come from this stinky vagina It was this vagina that gave you life, and I don't care if you smell something You're made of the smell You smell she flips back the seat belt retracts with a snap and I can tell by her neck that her face is red And she looks over at my stepdad and asks if he can believe what just happened I mean really later. She declares loudly to the car ceiling that her vagina doesn't smell But her comeback is so delayed no one responds Only the song what's my age again is playing softly in the background and at home my mother asks How could I be so rude? What is wrong with me? So on I told her I was just being honest Geez, I have a feeling that my own kids will be like that some day Really because I'm like pregnant now, and I'm afraid And that decades from now I might over clean my vagina Afraid of my own odors and instead hear my kids complain about my bad breath or my hairy armpits Or my long toenails instead and then I'll think of my mother and everything will feel fitting She'll be a smelly older woman by then and every part of her will fall over Her teeth her hair her anus and the assortment of scents and ocean Freely sailing through the air each morning a new diaper a new rank I will smell all of her as she forgets the car the seat belt the way she told me I was made from her and when I'm done She'll ask me to open the window and let her out into the world and when I leave her bedside I will smell my sweat my hands, and I will recognize myself Hey So it's like really good for my ego Thanks Let's so like being pregnant makes you not feel like doing anything but sleeping and eating tacos and burritos and like Jamba juice, and so I haven't been writing very much. So your clapping is really nice. So thank you. Okay And this is my last one bath time It's along the same lines, so no shock now you guys are over the hump Bath time my dog smells he needs a shower and I take him to the bathtub Attach a special doggy hose and spray him down. I go for his head his ass his penis his ears I add soap between his toes and everywhere between and to anything that folds And I bathe him like he's my own and without hesitation. I rinse out the center of his ass Lift his tail and shoot the water in like a rosebud like a bidet, you know Anyway, I left the door open and my roommate comes in and he starts squealing and says you He's chuckling and gagging at the same time, and then I'm thinking I'm not sure what's more gross My dog's asshole in full spread or me cleaning my dog's asshole and either way I remain silent I want to say something like everyone poops or this is totally natural, dude Or you're next because your ass all smells pretty no, but anyway, I keep silent There's nothing to be said really my dog. My dog doesn't have hands He has the intelligence of a four-year-old He can't understand what I'm doing or why I'm doing it or why he should feel naked or if it's even possible without clothes But I've humiliated him and he has no idea of that either I'm manhandling him and while by consent or not he needs to be cleaned He needs to be taken care of he will be me one day or how my mother will be soon I will need to bathe her and touch everything and remain quiet Thank you