night train to laos
Notes of the rain trembled
on the rim of my mother’s umbrella
as she carried the luggage
of fifty years in America into the heart
of a home she still recalled in pieces. She did not expect
to wait long for the train to Laos or the damp gray
light that slowly settled over the mountains.
She still remembered the way the dark-green jungle
unfurled, how the shadows slept on trickling beds
of water, her sandals crusted with mud. But now
crinkled in her hands was a photo of her mother
in sepia colored rain. A mother waving farewell
to a future. Peb mam li sib ntsib ib hnub,
softly spoken, cupped around my mother’s ear,
a string of words she has kept
only awake in dreams. At the station, little fires
flickered around her, one-by-one, the eyes from a family
of tigers, of lightning bugs, of spiritsrekindling, igniting for her return.
KENG XIONG (he/him) is a Hmong American creative artist based in Minnesota. He graduated from the UMN-TC with a BA in English and a BIS in Creative Writing, Leadership, and Asian American studies. He enjoys writing poems and performance-based texts and is interested in exploring and sharing Hmong and immigrant stories with a focus on identity, language, and family. He is currently working on his first poetry collection in the Loft Literary Center’s year-long apprenticeship program. His works appear and are forthcoming in the minnesota review, the Paper Lantern Project, SEA Change Lab Zine, and elsewhere.
