Why don’t you stay in the US?

I was born a man's failed dream.
As a prayer, my father asks

Con thương ba không? Sao không ở Mỹ?
I dream the birth of a language
where the passive voice of thương

doesn't mean to be wounded.
Every love prays for my death,
seeking the ghost of someone else.

I lie still, a featherless thing.
When hope fails, a dream looks like
a daughter without wings.

Ba thương con không? I ask
as a prayer. The tongue
of silence buries me alive.

———

Love is the closest translation of the Vietnamese verb thương, though not the exact spirit. Thương conveys a type of compassion with much understanding and acceptance, and can be used for any close relationship. Perhaps ironically, one of its passive voice forms is bị thương, which doesn’t mean “to be loved”, but “to be wounded”.
Con thương ba không? Sao không ở Mỹ? can be roughly translated into “Child, do you love me? Why don’t you stay in the US?”, and Ba thương con không? means “Father, do you love me?”
This poem follows a form I created myself. I draw inspirations from 2 classic poetic forms, the American sonnet and the Vietnamese lục bát. Here are the rules:
- 14 lines; 1 couplet and 4 tercets.
- Each line contains 6-8 syllables.
- Each line in the couplet is repeated (loosely) alternatively in the middle line of the following tercets. (to capture the inescapable loss in meaning in every translation.)
- Must have at least one non-English word

Tran Tran (she/her/hers) writes in the muddle between English and Vietnamese. Her poems are forthcoming in Salamander Magazine and The Seventh Wave. Currently based in Vietnam, she started Wordlust, a first-of-its-kind community project that runs open mics and writing workshops to foster self-expression and connection through poetry. Tran also co-hosts a local podcast named “Lắng Ngẫu Hứng", where she invites listeners to explore impromptu poetry writing. Outside poetry, she loves a good laugh and plenty of nature.