American Inheritance

(after Thao & The Get Down Stay Down)

In the car going nowhere that matters
I hide tears behind sunglasses. 
Tell me, how
do I make you proud?

I see them running 
on the tarmac in Kabul. 
Running to grab hold of the plane 
already

taken off. No one 
is dancing, Thao. Maybe
it’s the way Ocean says,
they are —
you were dancing 
to machine gun fire. 

It is 1975
cycling endlessly 
through pandemic 
through ecological disaster 
through same old same old 
man made war.

In an email going nowhere that matters
I reorder these words
to convince the same white men 
let in the “allies” 
the “women & children” 
the “collateral damage”
to a new “home” they never asked for. 

I see them running 
on the tarmac in Saigon.
You never got on the plane.
You waited and waited and
waited and took your chance 
by sea. On anniversaries

you tell me about the boat
the seven foot waves that so many 
didn’t survive. You 
never told me how you survived 
and I never asked, 

what died at sea? 
It is 2021 
cycling endlessly and 
your resentment 
my shame 
something…………….has calcified
into

……….silence

between

.

.

us

……..I haven’t earned
……..your
………………..sorrow
…………………………….and it
………………………………………will

…………………………………………bury
…………………………………………me.

Phoebe Bui (she/they) is a queer Vietnamese Filipina American poet and researcher currently based in Laurel, MD. They received their MSc in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics.