Original Poetry from the STF Poetry Team

Doing New Identity
Samantha Neugebauer

Lao women in America
learn to say I’m tired
tam mak hung
Can things ever been restored?
When girls start to talk like women,
a language is invented.

2,092,888
2,092,889
2,092,890

Wet-rice field walking
leaving the Plain of Jars
polygamy
And into urban metal warehouses
Lao men cry performance error,
where have our women gone in immigrant America?

2,092,891
2,092,892
2,092,893

We are right beside you dear, she says
who I am is always who I am in terms of
someone else.
When you say one sound,
how it affects the sounds that come next
You are multiplying.

2,092,894
2,092,895
2,092,896

Refugees just doing femininity like the white girls do
Spend life learning acceptable responses
If I say hello
you say hello back while inside heads
busy negotiating new identities

2,092,897
2,092,898
2,092,899

2,093,900 tons
we are and we did
bombs
exploding into new pieces.

*Inspired by Daryl Gordon

—-

Astronomer-Poet
Samantha Neugebauer

In liquid,
unable to build the instruments and potions for new worlds
the astronomer-poet spends its delicate hours
teaching with girl-ed hands
the pale fishes
because nothing it loves
is touchable.

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