Paul Tran: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lipstick Elegy

 

I climb down to the beach facing the Pacific. Torrents of rain

shirr the sand. On the other side, my grandmother sleeps

soundlessly in her bed. Her áodài of the whitest silk.

My mother knew her mother died before the telephone rang

like bells announcing the last American helicopter leaving SàiGòn.

Arrow shot back to its bow. Long-distance missile.

She’d leap into the sky to fly home if she could. Instead she works

overtime. Curls her hair with hot rollers. Rouges her cheeks

like Gong Li in Raise the Red Lantern. I’m her understudy. Hiding

in the doorway between her grief and mine, I apply her foundation

to my face. I conceal the parts of me she conceals, puckering my lips

as if to kiss a man that loves me the way I want to be loved.

I speak their bewitching names aloud. Twisted Rose. Fuchsia in Paris. Irreverence.

I choose the lipstick she’d least approve of. My mouth a pomegranate

split open. A grenade with a loose pin. In the kitchen,

I wrap a white sheet around my waist and dance

for hours, mesmerized by my reflection in a charred skillet.

I laugh her laugh, the way my grandmother laughed

when she taught me to pray the ChúĐại Bi, when I braided her hair

in unbearable heat, my tiny fingers weaving the silver strands

into a fishtail, a French twist. Each knot a future she never named, buried

in the soil of her, where she locked away the image of her sons and daughters

locked away. I’m sorry, mother of my mother, immortal bodhisattva

with a thousand hands, chewing a fist of betel root, your teeth black as dawn.

No child in our family stays a child their mother can love.

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Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin, 2022). Their work appears in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, Paul is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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                     Man Ray, A l’Heure de l’Observatoire les Amoureux (Observatory Time: The Lovers), 1932–4.

Comments

[Anne Harding Woodworth]

I love the way Paul Tran gives us their autobiography commingled with a mother story, a grandmother story, a war story, and their own observation of relationship: “I choose the lipstick she’d least approve of.” Lovely, complicated stories. Thanks.

[Bill Nevins]

"In the kitchen,/I wrap a white sheet around my waist and dance/for hours, mesmerized by my reflection in a charred skillet."ant

Stunning brilliant just god damn great poetry, language, imagery. Suprises!
Must read Paul Tran's book!

Thanks for this PAUL AND TERENCE!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Anne.

[Terence Winch]

Bill: thanks for the comment.

[Jack Skelley]

incandescent imagery. Thank you, P & T !

[Gardner McFall]

A dynamite poem. Paul Tran never disappoints: the honesty, vulnerability coupled with distinct control of imagery and line make this poem (for me) admirable & memorable.

[Grace Cavalieri]

"I’m her understudy. Hiding

in the doorway between her grief and mine"

This is spirit in action. Giving us amazement.

And I long for this day each week to see the art curated by Terence.

[Beth J]

In the haunting pictures he paints in this poem, Paul Tran takes us well beneath the surface into something real and memorable. Glad to be introduced to his work here.

[Denise Duhamel]

I love Paul's work! I taught their book All the Flowers Kneeling this past winter. Simply stunning! Thanks for sharing this, Terence.

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

The imagery of clothing and cosmetics rubs up against both concealing in plain sight and unveiling what Yeats might call "the deep heart's core." The language is effulgent where it needs to be, yet never spills into excess even when excess may be part of the point. The first image taking my breath away comes in the first and second lines: "Torrents of rain / shirring the sand." The choice of "shirring" is pin-perfect: a trimming procedure in clothing and fashion where cloth is gathered by drawing the material up on parallel rows of short, running stitches. I can picture Paul Tran's description with utter clarity. "Lipstick Elegy" is rich in evocative--and provocative--language and lean in the most sobering, reflecting scenes. The equilibrium struck by Paul Tran is as deft as it gets in verse. And the last line, "No child in our family stays a child their mother can love," is devastating in its candor. Superb poem, superb pick: plaudits respectively to Paul Tran and Terence Winch.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Jack. Appreciate the comment.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Grace!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for the comment, Denise.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle. Great comment.

[Geoffrey Himes]

We can all look beautiful if the mirror is polished enough, but to look beautiful in a charred skillet is beyond most.

[lally]

stunningly poignant

[Don Berger]

Thank you to Paul and Terence for this poem. I love its precision, how it sticks to the concrete, the picture, so much of which is vivid and new to me. There's such a good surprise the reader gets from taking in so much new and expected description of these urgent actions and conditions.

[Terence Winch]

Don: Thanks back to you.

[Eileen]

Wonderful poem!

[clarinda]

Wonderful, brilliant, unsettling, loving poem. I agree with everything everybody said.

[Michael Whelan]

What exquisite structure! So subtle, so tender, so rich.
Thanks for bringing this work to us, Terence.

[Terence Winch]

Michael: Thanks for the comment.