My Time in Hanoi by Sean Singer

Outside the threshold, kneeling full of dust
Hanoi sprouts in the salt. Its leafy barbs
are the lingual equivalency of a vu quang ox
sucking a river. Honey jars & bear
gall bladders hang in a shop window.

A childless couple visits the Perfume Pagoda
to douse their wick. Where the cyclo descends
into the sea, a dragon unfurls her muscular canoe.

Hanoi trades me 11,000 dong if I do a little
monkey dance. At the moment I’m supposed
to twirl & jig-a-jug, a typhoon crashes through
the thatched wall, a seedblown bloodlamp singing:

Em oi / doi khong co em / Nhu pho / khong co nuoc leo:
O my beloved / life without you is like / pho without its broth.