Paul Tran
I leap into the public swimming pool
Sun-gilded water gluts my lungs
It seizes the space my body carves through
like a penny chucked into a fountain
A wish for my suffering to end
I pay the price to reenter the universe unstained
Ignorant of what people do to each other
The more I know him the less I understand
The less I understand the more I know him
—Father who fought an un-winnable war
Father a smear in my throat
Father swinging me over his shoulders
my tiny fists pounding his wide brown back—
I think I can stay here
An archipelago returning to the sea
A child refusing to be touched again
Death puts its mask on me
and I stop breathing
Feelings melt away
Speech’s a lifeguard off-duty
It cannot save me
In my passage from oblivion
I hear gulls gliding overhead
A xylophone of bubbles burst
on the plash’s blurry blue-burnt surface
I close my eyes and see a foehn
sizzling on a palm’s emerald surface
I open them
and its leaves
combust