Rants and Rambles

A bustling Granville Island on Canada Day, as seen from a sizzling hot dog To compensate for the idle summer in 2021, when I spent most of my waking hours gazing at the laksa leaves on my rooftop garden, this July has been a fairly eventful month. The month rolled in with a festive Canada Day celebration, accompanied by frequent trips around the Lower Mainland. After numerous failed attempts of finding a parking spot at the Steveston Salmon Festival at the sleepy-turned-vibrant Steveston Village, I hopped on Canada Line and practiced my bus-hopping skills to reach Granville Island. Although I've visited the island quite a few times, I couldn't help being immediately transported to a whole different world. The chill Granville Island I visited during drizzling days in Vancouver was miles away from the breathtaking pier I came to on a clement morning. Downtown Vancouver was shimmering in its glory, fully awake after two years of hibernation: groups of radiant tourists chitchatted ...

Originally published in Pluvia Literary Magazine, Issue III (July 2022).  A video of me reading this poem can be found here , performed  in the blazing Saigon August. Obsidian sky, Pacific cold snaps Glaze backyard grass and graze frontyard glass. Nightlamp’s soft glow, fireplace roars, I slide my fingertips across the keyboard, lingering on the ivory tabs.   Yet, the keyboards are jammed, and melodies are entangled Like laugher trapped in clenched teeth as the cold pricks. So I turn to A minor staccato , then accelerando A tribute to crystalline birches and snowy rail tracks.   The notes, joining hands together Fly from their long-captivated residence, the barred staffs, And swing up and down to dance away the night Along with the flurries outside.   Forte notes following horse footprints in the sunset become decrescendo when reaching snow-clad hamlets with smoking chimneys. Sharps and flats mingle exquisitely as snow an...

Behold. The unknown expanse stretching, vaster than the universe. No bubbling elixirs of life. Vestibules, light-year distances, nor glorious civilizations on dusty planets. Leave those visions for illustrations, of sci-fi novels, Hollywood, and over-optimistic scientific machinations. They are nothing,  but fragments of our daydreams. Concocted from a latent corner of the hippocampus, the same place of alchemy’s, telepathy, and astrology’s origin. What is to happen lies in the hands of the infinitesimal. Specks of dust that sleep on the shoulder of life. The sparkling eyes of a child upon touching the alabaster page of a book, the cradling hands of a mother bringing her baby for immunizations, the steaming pots of dinner after a day of hard work. They are real, felt and cherished, Seen, by every single one of us, while marching: Towards the Future. Thumbnail photo : My cousin and I on a basket boat ( thúng in Vietnamese), aiming for the ocean in Quang Ngai Province, central Vietn...