Out of the Margins

The distance between America and Vietnam is 8,568 miles. The weight of your father’s burdens outweighs and overpowers anything you will ever experience.

The entrance to the library is forbidding enough – the library’s six-storey wings run north and south of the tower like fortress walls – but once inside, through the pass card activated turnstiles, the Library opens itself up to the willing reader.

What does it mean, to survive? To be “too” aestheticized? To be considered exempt from injury (harmless, invisible, dispensable), yet at the same time to invite injury, due to the object one’s body supposedly represents?

Before the pandemic, my mother and I took walks. A temporary truce to our bickering, physical activity and fresh air made us better.

saigon came back to me in waves/fans blasting on max, slicing hot air

Read Alixen Pham's poem and listen to her recitation.