My given name, Thiên-bo,

translates to

treasure from heaven.

An immediate reason for my being

indecipherable

the moment it stung

unfamiliar tongue

so soon after “hello.”

I would finally like to thank my parents

for what I once thought of

as an unpronounceable curse

that I’d have loved to bleach—

because everyone who has ever addressed me

from bullies to crushes to haters

has had no choice

but to call me

valuable.

Not a Silverfish

A large centipede was in my tub for days.

It looked like a prehistoric zipper made of needles.

A firecracker with too many fuses.

I skipped taking a shower for far too long—

an unspoken compromise—hoping

it would disappear on its own,

preferring to be dirty over drowning my fear.

Eventually I trapped it in a container,

took it outside while it scrambled

like an explosion of exclamation points

in the foggy plastic,

and let it go.

These centipedes are often mistaken for silverfish—

they actually make dinner of them

and other more damaging pests.

I know what it’s like to be mistaken for something else,

to feel that the first reaction when a new set of eyes encounters your body

is to want to smash you.

To wonder what in history made a caterpillar a caterpillar,

a ladybug a ladybug.

To know what it’s like to be invisible until revealed to be ugly,

alien thing, hairy wiggle

whose body tells the only story

anyone is willing to hear.

When it shook free of my trap,

its head made of stepladders,

its body a spasm of a hundred loose threads of fate,

it didn’t make a sound but I swear

I could hear it scream that it wanted

to travel to prehistory

and rewrite the many veins of possibility

that would shape how it would be seen

so that the present could be a place

where it could be

understood for what

it was.

Being Asian in America

Survive long enough

and eventually

everything becomes

a revolution.

Untitled / Fathers

The fathers I know don’t name their children after themselves.

Bodies of water never still,

teachers without a name,

colors too deep for the human eye to translate,

a street curving off in both directions,

a country spirit whose voice is a bell in the wind—

we give names to things that cannot be contained or restrained,

even naming them minimizes them.

Names in languages that must be sung but that we can barely speak.

We look into our children’s faces and see the end of all we know.

All our lives we have been made to feel small and now at last

this is a good thing.

One day I’ll say I want to give you everything because I come from not so

much

and no matter how far away I get I feel too close to nothing every day.

Maybe the important thing is that you made me realize I just want a