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# One Poem by Kien Lam
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/one-poem-by-kien-lam/
- Published: 2018-08-22T11:01:37.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:24:47.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected one poem by Kien Lam for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Wendy Xu
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-18 14:37 (2018)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2018/08/img_-yaghmai.jpg)

Rosha Yaghmai, “Silicone (Book of Kings, p.69)” (2018) (detail), silicone, eyeshadow, earth pigments, digital print on silk, tulle, organza, nylon. On view in Made in LA at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino/Hyperallergic)

## Light Perception

People say *Vietnamese sounds ugly* and I know

what they really mean is their ears are little UFOs

that trailblaze over secret military bases

abducting people from their homes and instilling their own

language so I understand it is scary

to hear something different but let me tell you it is scarier

to recognize a sound but not know what it means even a rabid animal

makes it clear to you that it has been wronged by parasites

but me I hear my mother give up on English every time

she talks to me to return to her alien tongue

and I am not prepared to travel into space where the stars

spread their dust into the abyss which is they say quiet

the science of sound unflinching as far as we know but how can it be

true I have looked upwards and I have heard the ocean stir inside me

the way it does when I hear Vietnamese this thing I once knew humans are passive

forgetters and I am instinctually afraid of growls hisses the deep night

but the human tongue is something else it is not a monster it can only

bite if you teach it it can only teach you there is more than one way

to see a light if you turn your head just slightly

the glare changes its shape there is nothing ugly at all

\* \* \*

Kien Lam is a Kundiman Fellow, 2017 Best New Poet, and Indiana University MFA alumni. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming from the *American Poetry Review,* *The Nation*, *Kenyon Review*, *Ploughshares*, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles where he writes about esports. For more, follow him on Twitter [@meanmisterkien](https://twitter.com/MeanMisterKien?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor&ref=hyperallergic.com).