Linh Dinh reading seven poems about language at DC HomeStay in Vũng Tàu on 6/21/26

Late Sorrows

Infant, you don’t know me. I’m called Millennium. Some people call me Ciao. Others: Sudden Death Overtime. Even in this friable language, all my names shame and infuriate me.

Salted peanuts: their asset tends to dissipate even as you’re saving them. I’ve buried them all over my estate, and now I can’t find them.

If the tailgates are diced into triangles, after cooked, so that I can still see them, then I will not eat them, but if the tailgates are melding in with the other foods, after cooked, so that I can’t see them, then of course I will eat them, even though I know I’m eating tailgates.

I must admit that I am an admirer of Goatee, the author of Foost. Late at night, I enjoy strumming along in the company of my steel guitar.

Blue

In some languages, the word “blue” does not exist. In others, the word “green.” In my native language, the word “color” does not exist.

A man was given everything in life but the color blue. All would have gone well had he not been told of his deprivation. Thereafter, he vowed to destroy everything in his path: home, country, confidantes, God, all the other colors...

Because I cannot pronounce the word “blue,” whenever my conversation calls for “blue,” I always say “red” instead.

Language and Meat

Language comes from meat. Without meat, 
There’s no language. It’s too obvious.

Meaty words shaped and rolled by a meaty tongue, 
Such as tender, juicy or sliced, for example, would be 
Meaningless without the muscles, tendons and fat
That wrap around bones. Words such as dead, lovely, 
Haggard, touch, desire or satisfaction. Further, 

Everyday language is overstuffed with meat: 
Don’t you slander my meat. A piece of meat,
She turned down such prime meat.


The Death of English

It stang me to sang of such thang:
This language, like all others, will be deep fried,
Will die, then be reborn as another tongue
Sloshed in too many mouths. What of
“That kiff joint has conked me on a dime”?
“Them cedars, like quills, writing the ground”?
It’s all japlish or ebonics, or perhaps Harold Bloom’s
Boneless hand fondling a feminist’s thigh. 

Vocab Lab

This word means yes,
however, maybe, or no,
depending on the situation.

This word means desire,
love, friendship, rape, or a sudden urge
to engage someone in a philosophical
conversation.

This word is unlearnable,
its meaning hermetic to all outsiders.
It can neither be pronounced
nor memorized.

This word is protean and can be spelled
an infinite number of ways.
Its meaning, however, is exact.

This word is also protean,
and may be used in place of any other word,
without loss of meaning.

This word can only be hinted at, implied,
and thus appears in no books,
not even in a dictionary.

This word can neither be spoken nor seen.
It can be freely written, however,
but only in complete darkness.

This word means one thing when spoken by a man,
and another thing, altogether different, when said by a woman.

This word means now, soon, or never,
depending on the age of the speaker.

This word means here, there, or nowhere,
depending on the speaker’s nationality.

It has often been said that the natives
will only teach foreigners a fake, degraded language,
a mock system of signs
parodying the real language.

It has also been said that the natives
don’t know their own language,
and must mimic the phony languages of foreigners,
to make sense out of their lives.

The Most Beautiful Word

I think “vesicle” is the most beautiful word in the English language. He was lying face down, his shirt burnt off, back steaming. I myself was bleeding. There was a harvest of vesicles on his back. His body wept. “Yaw” may be the ugliest. Don't say, “The bullet yawed inside the body.” Say, “The bullet danced inside the body." Say, "The bullet tumbled forward and upward.” Light slanted down. All the lesser muscles in my face twitched. I flipped my man over gently, like an impatient lover, careful not to fracture his C-spine. Dominoes clanked under crusty skin: Clack! Clack! A collapsed face stared up. There was a pink spray in the air, then a brief rainbow. The mandible was stitched with blue threads to the soul. I extracted a tooth from the tongue. He had swallowed the rest.

39 động từ 

 Nhìn, chớp, mỉm cười, 
Chào, hỏi thăm, liếm, 
Xoa, thở dài, dựa, 
Chu, vuốt, tặc lưỡi, 
Nuốt, phỉnh, rung, 
Thêu, vỗ, quyết định, 
Bác, phì cười, phỏng, 
Nấc, trù tính, chạm, 
Nhủ, khen, chớp chớp, 
Nổ, trích, giải thích, 
Ra vẻ quan tâm, liếc, gãi, 
Khều, địt, đằng hắng, 
Ngáp, cạ cạ, thở dài.

Linh Dinh reading "13" at DC HomeStay on 6/20/26

13  

 

You are often hunched over in an armchair to confide sweet nothings to the side of a face. In this sense, you resemble a bassoon. Though you expect the most extravagant praises for the most trivial accomplishments, you shun and despise those who view you favorably.

 

As sunlight slants down on another late afternoon, you are strumming on a guitar, eating shepherd’s pie, and sipping rum-laced coffee. Always bitterly exuberant, you see life as a pink spathe swathing a yellow spadix. Tonight, standing in a musty hallway, you will speak your penultimate line with some dignity.

 

You are often seen in profile at the top of a stairs, listening to a distant music. Your hair is bouffant in the front, flat in the back. Your best view is three-quarter. A minute or two after midnight, champagne will spill from your fragrant mouth.

 

As you bend down to retrieve a long-lost favor, someone seizes you by the shoulder. You are such a master at aestheticizing your crimes that even your victims are grateful to be included in the horrible photographs.

 

Inducing doubt and self-hatred in all those you come into contact with, you are a cancer and a pig. When a stream of your indulgent reveries is nixed by an unpleasant, ghastly image, you let out a high C and touch yourself immodestly.

 

“A straight line is easy enough,” you hear in a dream, “but it is not possible to draw a perfect circle.” You smirk at this provocation. Waking up, you work all night on an endless piece of paper, drawing circle after circle, each one wobbly, oblong, squarish, rectangular, some are outright triangles.

 

Trying to peel away your fingers, someone pleads, “Let go of me!” but you are already beyond discretion. Like every other human being, you crave a single moment of absolute exposure. Today will be your day. Your veins will pop out.

 

Overhearing “Where I come from, people don’t . . .” you punch the speaker, a blind, elderly immigrant, in the face, knocking two teeth out, before you yourself are knocked unconscious by a blunt instrument from behind. Waking up days later, you are told by a lugubrious dog that he, too, has often slept through the best parts.

 

In the men’s room of a small-town bus terminal, you discover your oil portrait in a trash can. You cut the canvas out, then stuff your folded face into your back pocket. Later, you notice with irritation that where your nose should be is a clay pipe, and your mouth is just a hole.

 

You cannot understand the story of a youth who falls in love with his own reflection in a spring. Where you are, water does not reflect. Nothing reflects. One’s view of oneself is made up entirely of other people’s verbal slanders.

 

Told by your employer to buy a new shirt, you respond, “To buy a new shirt is to assume that I have at least two more years to live. Such presumptuousness cannot go unpunished. What's more, there would be this outlandish incongruity between a brand new shirt and my already worn-out body. Such an incongruity would cause my entire being, every single cell, to feel an unspeakable shame, a shame not on the skin, but in the skin, a shame to bring on my early death.”

 

You wake up to a jungly tune. On the ceiling is a water stain showing your mother’s face in three-quarter view. A suspicious fluid drips on your forehead. You wish there were a hand the size of an umbrella to protect you from all this fresh degradation.