Kevin Minh Allen
Born Nguyễn Ðức Minh in Gia Ðịnh district of Sài Gòn on December 5, 1973, Kevin Minh Allen was adopted at 9 months and flown to the U.S. in August 1974. He grew up in a suburb of Rochester, NY. At 27 years of age, he moved to Seattle, where he is currently enjoying the view. Kevin's poems, book reviews and news articles have been published in numerous media outlets. His work can be found online in Tiếng Magazine, Asian American Movement Magazine, The Fighting 44s and the Poetry Superhighway, and in print as well, such as The Northwest Asian Weekly, The International Examiner and HazMat Journal. Currently, Kevin blogs at Ethnically Incorrect and is working feverishly on his first poetry manuscript, called The Wind Above The Coast.
De Profundis
In the photo lies an infant
with toothpick limbs at his side,
motionless, mouth agape.
Yellowing paper ages his skin and leaves him
transparent underneath the afterglow
of a photographer’s flashbulb.
The sisters named him.
Up from the depths,
he called from the back of a bus
with no arms curled under him.
The nurses thought he’d never live past a week.
But when his sores healed and the clouds in his eyes parted,
he posed for the camera on the floor of the orphanage,
plump cheeks laughing.
One more child flown out of the carcass of civil war.
A life saved to memorialize those who perished
in the wind above the coast.
Haing Ngor
On that TV screen you
stumbled upon and crawled over
your countrymen’s skulls
that popped out of thick black mud.
Myriad limbs broken and yellow.
Disbelief at the cruelty unchecked.
Your face so wasted
playing a man so real,
as real as charred skin in your hair can get.
Our Rejoinder
if they were to ask us
‘why now?’
‘what could we be thinking?’
our answers would appear too shallow for their lofty ears
and our reasons are to be locked in a box kept high on the closet shelf.
if we were to turn and ask each other
‘why us?’
‘why now?’
the vast field we lie upon would answer,
‘because it is now or never.’
receiving, incredulous, life’s little tantrums
we set them by the side of the road to let them burn down to inconclusive stubs.
we look into each other’s eyes
through twin telescopes of longing,
feeling ever closer, but knowing it’s a long road ahead.
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