Poems by Mong-Lan
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Burrowing
1. whatever questions you have, ask yourself. a carnaval weekend with no carnaval. all quiet anesthetized. 2. schools closed. children go about without teachers, without supervision, without vision. children grow up like weed, used to viewing screens. a generation of children committing suicide, hanging by their shoelaces children go without lunches without basic grammar skills, mute, dumb. sally grows up without song, without skill billy grows up without only fear in his bones, addicted to video games lizzy grows up without light, paleness infiltrated her skin and heart raul grows up without growing up, a paralyzed child inside 3. the remnants of a locked down city the energy too locked down work in moving images. don’t forget this people walk the streets masked with fear people walk about clothed in their anxiety businesses closed eyes burrowing out from under their masks like worms, suffocated, suffocating. lock down your energy the media, the city mayors and presidents order lock down your spirits we don’t want you to fly we want to occupy your brain with fear 4. maybe today i will figure out how to live. clean up water the plants maybe today i will figure out maybe today i will kick my internet addiction and learn to live by my wits. 5. the light on a leaf light between the eaves light under skin light of the unborn light of the souls hovering above us light within the light shade of a tree Black & White, Lost a certain wild light on the beach fierce contrast storm & sun the ocean black & white a woman looking at the world newly awakened from her deep psychotic slumber one side the world all in tormented gloom the other side a rainbow the sun stark |
Mong-Lan, poet, novelist, essayist, former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Fulbright Scholar, winner of a Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Awards for Poetry, and other awards, is the author of seven books and three chapbooks, the most recent of which is the full-length collection Dusk Aflame: poems & art. Mong-Lan’s poetry has been nationally and internationally anthologized in Best American Poetry, various Norton anthologies and various Pushcart Prize volumes. She has finished a novel with an excerpt in the North American Review. Also a visual artist, musician, composer, singer, and dancer, she left her native Viet Nam on the last day of the evacuation of Sai Gon. A former college professor, she has a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Arizona. As a musician, her ten albums of jazz piano and tangos with voice and guitar also showcase her poetry. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art and in public exhibitions internationally. She has studied ballet, jazz and flamenco, and for over twenty-five years has specialized in Argentine tango, which she also performs and teaches. Mong-Lan has read and performed her poetry and music on many stages, to include at cultural organizations, universities, schools, libraries, across the U.S. and internationally.
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