Jackfruit sizzle like flesh
carried through the
curves of your mouth / Mẹ’s voice wrapped in bare hands
_______spilling seeds / an extension – from one land
_______and an accent mark to another
_______about our names giving way and then
receding
_______from Thuylinh to Thuy
_______and the nước that never quenches thirst
because it’s never enough and only separates
_______this line between
_______what I know of you
and of the you in our tiny frames / the edges in between / black and white / the color that gives way / of an unfamiliar gaze / a smile I am not meant to see / a posture I do not realize / the you before me / and the accent marks now
Mẹ stands in a corner
Peeling mít as it sizzles—unfurling its core and extending its finality.
Victoria Thuylinh Pham (she/her) is a doctoral candidate in History and a Mellon Cluster Fellow in Comparative Race and Diaspora at Northwestern University. Her interests include memory studies of the Vietnam War, Asian American history, refugee migration, militarization, and settler colonialism. Outside of academia, Victoria is dedicated to community organizing such as volunteering at the Vietnamese Association of Illinois in Chicago, facilitating dialogues about community issues or providing lectures about Vietnamese American history.
