Kick up the volume and switch on the microphone: green light
activating my father’s stage presence. These nights,
rarely does the house fill with silence. Me and mommy
are the audience tonight, just like every night. I watch the
overdramatic scenes play out on the screen, the extravagant
Khmer dance parties and discos, the men pining at women who
exchange shy smiles and glances caught briefly by the cameraman.
Nostalgia fills me like technicolored lights and never-ending sparkle graphics.
In and out, left and right, my father sways his hips. He teaches me
groundwork: right hand-left foot, left hand-right foot—each delicate
hand pinching thumb and middle fingerpad to form fruit. But now
the band fades out: Thet-thet-tha-ret-thaa, thet-thet-tha-ret-thaa…
April Lim is a Chinese Cambodian American writer from Houston, TX. She has received fellowships and scholarships from Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, The Watering Hole, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and elsewhere. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Sweet: A Literary Confection, Bayou Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Oklahoma State University where she is an Editorial Assistant for the Cimarron Review.
