Sông có khúc, người có lúc
           –a Vietnamese proverb

It was not their fault / the aunties and uncles / Ba Mẹ
coming here when / (insert your favorite diasporas)
they brought all they could / in dinghies slushing sea salt
hope doubt discourse / the whole packet of seeds
their parents shared / on nights when the river stood still
ones they hoped to plant themselves / by their own choice
I wonder if this is all they hoped for / Iowa
where cornfields are mowed / more frequently than lawns
where people do not look like us / when there is nothing to do
but pray to God / worship what remained of Ronald Reagan
in Billy Graham churches / but I learned to love hymns
how their choirs rattle cathedral halls / I like to imagine 
this is what they felt / when they faced the Pacific
three hundred miles east of the Philippines / nowhere
it was not their fault / that the packet of seeds
hope doubt discourse / is all we can write about
all the (insert your favorite diasporas) / confessed
so White folk can pretend to know / and pray for
in their Bible studies / decorate their for-profit subscriptions
so like me / they can imagine how choirs rattle cathedral halls
something worth praying for / pretend to feel the sea salt

                             I’m a foreigner
                 to my mother’s land / its seas
                                       I lie they are mine