I have nothing but love for my wife
But at times her words cut like a knife.

Dear all,

I concurred with everyone’s feedback. It was like a huge family gathering without the dramas. Mad kudos to all the leaders, the parents, and especially the kids—without them, we would not have been together in one room. I hope no one got sick.

I have a small suggestion to some of the parents, especially the fathers, to talk to your doctor about sleep apnea and sleep test. We had the entire orchestra playing during the night. I have sleep apnea myself and I brought the CPAP machine with me. It really helped with the music playing.

Chị K, anh T, S, and O, welcome to the Hung Vuong Family (not the Thang Long Family) LOL!

Cheers!

I don’t have a clue what I had read. Mlinko’s poems are way beyond my limited comprehension of poetry. I read the entire collection twice and couldn’t pick out one for my blog. It’s definitely not her; it’s me.

The boy at my poetry reading wants to start a reliquary.
He might be twelve, his belly billowing like a safety
net for his body and his thick, curly hair the color
of Tang. His shoulders have the breadth and weight
of a kitchen cupboard but his voice is a child’s,
girlish and mannered. His name is River.

He tells me the bolt he found along the bank of a river
will be the first official piece of his reliquary.
Meaningful objects are hard to come by, he says with a child’s
comic gravity, but I’ve got this bolt. Lifesaver-
shaped erasers line the shop counter behind him beside paperweights
of Paris. In the Q&A his cheeks prick a muddled rum color

each time he asks a question, like What’s your favorite color?
and Do you believe in numerology? His mother scolds, River!
when he asks my deepest fear, but he waits
for my answer. I want to ask how he knows what a reliquary
is. I want to know what the bolt looks like, if it’s right now safe
in his pocket and if the sign it held warned CHILDREN

CROSSING or WIND GUSTS. A child’s
deepest fear is not of danger but of loss, though of loss that doesn’t color
what comes after. Absence without aftermath. He’s so intent on saving
what surrounds him that who he’ll be without it must seem, to River,
as abstract as old age—a minor evil that the simplest of reliquaries
could overcome. I want to hold the bolt’s small, solid weight

in my hand, hold its useless intention, but people are waiting
to buy my book and tell me how when they were children
they also lost their mothers, as if inside reliquaries
we keep grief, and not the rose-scented and colorless
bones of saints. As if grief could carry us like rocks across a river,
embedded in sediment so we might safely

walk above water. But grief is the water. I have saved
messages from answering machines and a nearly weightless
shred of cork, several post-it notes, and a petal from a river
of curbside cherry blossoms that my father scooped like a child
with both hands to let fly in front of my mother. Moth-colored
powerless petal. And then-isn’t a book also a reliquary?

River waits in line to ask what he should put in his reliquary.
Instead of signing my name I list: a used eraser, a child’s watercolor,
and a page from your diary saying you haven’t lost anything,
you’re safe.

Taije Silverman

and sipping with tears.
I’m missing you everyday, mama.
I wish you were still here.

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Yesterday was Whitetail’s last day for the season. Blame it on Mother Nature. She has been warm the entire winter. We hadn’t had a snowstorm. If the weather stays this way Liberty and Roundtop will be shutting down soon as well.

I took Đạo and Xuân to Liberty yesterday to test out my new Rome United bindings, which I found a good deal on Amazon for $100. The price has gone back up to $160. Since I bought the Capita board that came with the step-in Flow bindings, I just went with it. I liked the convenience of the step-in style, but the way they strapped the top of my feet made me excruciatingly uncomfortable when I turned, particularly on my toe side.

The cause for the pain was not just the old bindings but also the way I turned. I tended to initiate my turns way too late. I pivoted my back foot too much to control my speed on my toe side. As a result, I slowed myself down and burned my legs. I need to fix this habit.

The Rome United bindings only strapped my toes and ankles; therefore, they were more tolerable. I still felt a bit of a pain when I pivoted, but it was not as bad as before. I am keeping the Rome United bindings. I hope I still have a chance to continue to hone my skills before the season’s over.

Mama, my son moans when he dreams again that I’m gone.
His hand on my finger curves into a lock when I stand.

I remember my mother’s shape in the darkness
like a pattern, sew it to the quilt, dip the stitch, pull.

Not her smell nor her actual voice when she said she was leaving. Long ago rustle of now.

And he’s sleeping the whole lit known night long,
my fur-feather baby, lobe and lung,
You know I can’t stay, you know

I’ll be here forever. It was a dream is what I say
when he tells me I left and that the house
became bigger and trapped him inside his room.

Nameless rainmaker, pattern of drops, and all we remember
the story we tell of it after.

The dead in the ground are the dark good shapes,
here by the bed to stay just a little while longer.
His warm one lock of a hand.

Hold harder, oh pure constellation.

How do we die, my son asks one night without context while we’re choosing his five bedtime books.

Taije Silverman

A few weeks ago, my brother-in-law gave me 24-pack Rockstar. While I am not a fan of energy drink, I do like mixing it with liquor. I tried half Rockstar with half Bombay Sapphire over ice and the combination was quite a kick. My energy was boosted for sure. Since I couldn’t finish all 24 cans of Rockstar myself, I brought them to our cabin camping trip.

I whipped them up for a few of my drinking buddies. They didn’t seem to like them at first, but they kept asking for more. We killed the bottle of gin much quicker than I had expected. I had to run to the liquor store to get another bottle.

The night before, we drank beer and bourbon until one in the morning. The men were snoring like crazy and I couldn’t sleep. Rockstar and Bombay gave me much more energy than I had expected. I felt great, but I knew this combo could be dangerous. I needed to take it easy.

A lovely collection from a Korean-American poet who received an MFA and PhD in poetry. I like the way she incorporates Korean characters into English even though I don’t know the words. My favorite pieces includes “The Symmetry of Fish,” “My Bed Shakes and I Assume the Ghosts Are Finally Getting Me,” and of course, “Remember This When You’re Hungry.”