Needle
by Linh Dinh

A needle plying the bloodstream will protect the body against cuts, dismemberments, decapitations, etc. It should be at least three inches long, of stainless steel, sewing variety.

Whenever a notched knife or an ax breaks surface of the skin, needle will rush instantaneously to the violated spot to thwart blow and prevent muscular laceration.

Needle travelling day and night beneath dermis, inside lumen, plowing plasma and platelets aside, cleaving blood clots: a local train going downtown.

The insertion has to be deliberate, casual, without ambivalence. Points of entry: dorsal digital artery beneath nail of big toe, blind (white) spot of the eyeball, ear canal, tip of penis.

A red gauze over the cornea, ping-ping notes scattered on a toy piano, a thrust up the urethra will create a host of childhood emotions.

Poor and Stupid
by Linh Dinh

I’m not allowed to eat sloppy joe, because sloppy joe’s too good for me. I’m not allowed to eat fruits or vegetables. Or chocolate. Or ice cream. I eat soft turd. I’m poor and stupid. I’ve been fucked, many times. I have this raggedy old shirt, so of course I’m embarrassed, but my jeans are brand new, with flared hems. Look here: there’s an ink skeleton inside my ear, inside my mouth, inside my eyelid. How is it possible that so many people can speak such good English, with perfect grammar, with nothing foreign, say, slivers of cabbage, between their straight teeth? And their hair smell so good? And I’m poor and stupid?

Speechless
by Linh Dinh

He came at roughly the Beaver’s age, learnt our language word by word, each syllable mangled, botched, before being straightened out, finally, but some sounds would remain elusive, even towards the end, whimpers and bangs. “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out.” “We’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.” “Kick ass, then go home.” Beneath a nuclear mushroom: “Made in America, tested in Japan.” There are so many cool ones. When he tried to talk, he mumbled, “as if he had something in his mouth,” which made them guffaw and shout, “Go back to China,” a generic taunt I’ve heard more than once, of course. “You talkin’ to me? Hey, I said, Are you talkin’ to me?”

There was nothing he could do about his unusual eyes, nose and mouth, short of violence, but he could have changed his name to “Joe” or something, placate them a little, betray his good will. By college, he had enough Anglo-Saxon, Latinated gibberish roiling in his head to entertain the funky, desperate notion that he could become a writer, an American one. Holy shit, no joke, say what? Feeling queer about it, a naked impostor, he pretended to be a business major. “Do you write in Korean? Chinese? Mongolian?” At last, he’d open those lips and flash his never-seen tongue.

He could never join, only look. He was a looker only, only he wasn’t a looker. He didn’t want to be looked at, actually, especially his looking eyes, which he hid behind shades. Through a digital peephole, he checked the scenery beneath tables, to examine seams, pleats, ruffles, anything tucked beneath anything else, fuzz, scars, socks, pom-poms, pores, he measured hips. True, everyone else just mostly looked also—this is, after all, a land of tireless oglers and vigilantes—but occasionally they could mesh into a resistant something or other, after a six pack, a cognac or a vodka. He shared their values, totally, only he couldn’t get none, until that moment when he finally dashed across the landmined border to join his peers on the other side. After this catharsis, we all got plenty to look at, between the car, Coke and bullshit commercials.

Why couldn’t he be like Hen Ly, or Henry Lee, one of his victims? Fresh off the boat, Henry just grinned, untied his tongue, snatched most of the awards, became a salutatorian. “Imagine sitting in class not knowing the language, now I am number two.” Why couldn’t he be like Bruce Lee, or Donald Trump, for that matter? Hell, why couldn’t he be like Linh Dinh, who was poised enough to write these calm lines:

    Refrain

    Well, then, if an alien object, something tiny
    Even, like a grain of bullshit, is persistently
    Lodged within the brain, there’s nothing to do
    But to shoot the motherfucker. My eyes
    Are alien to me, their defects hindering
    My already dire discourse with the real,
    This lake here, them privates. That’s why
    I must shoot the motherfuckers.
     [from “Jam Alerts,” Chax Press, 2007]

Judging from his plays, Cho Seung-hui never nicked his target. Judging from his acts, he was as American as, well, too many to mention. Pumping iron, cropping his hair short, flipping his black baseball cap backward, in a black T-shirt, he finally looked like he belonged, an Army of One, ready for action. Bring ‘em on.

Linh Dinh was born in Vietnam in 1963, came to the US in 1975, and has also lived in Italy and England. He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press 2000) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press 2004), and four books of poems, All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish 2003), American Tatts (Chax 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School 2006) and Jam Alerts (Chax 2007). His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, Best American Poetry 2007 and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. Linh Dinh is also the editor of the anthologies Night, Again: Contemporary Fiction from Vietnam (Seven Stories Press 1996) and Three Vietnamese Poets (Tinfish 2001), and translator of Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, the poetry of Phan Nhien Hao (Tupelo 2006). Blood and Soap was chosen by the Village Voice as one of the best books of 2004. His poems and stories have been translated into Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Arabic. He has also published widely in Vietnamese.