Don Mee Choi and Craig Santos Perez
Posted in 2016-2017 Readings and Talks
October 4, 2016
Seminar 5:30 PM | Lannan Center (New North 408)
Reading 8:00 PM | Copley Formal Lounge
Operation Punctum
–Don Mee Choi
The television in The Deer Hunter is in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Everything is still at
Welsh’s Lounge: the clouds, the sky, the unlit neon sign outside the window. All is
calm, all is bright. I sing in English while my father is in Vietnam. American wives
are in immeasurable pain and so is my mother. American soldiers are pushing a hel-
icopter to the right side of the TV screen. Behind the soldiers is number 19. It stands
for USS Hancock: its nickname, Fighting Hannah. Helicopter whirring. It sounds like
Godzilla crying. My father is nowhere to be seen because he’s behind the camera,
behind the lens. His eye’s filled with the green ocean. It zooms in on the soldiers,
some in uniform, some shirtless, on the decks with number 19 behind them. They’re
calm and bright, looking down at the flight platform below. Nobody is crying. Num-
ber 19 goes beyond Yi Sang’s number 13. History is hysterical. The-13th-child-also-
says-it’s-terrifying. 13+3+3. 19=13. A modest, shared hallucination. I’m still the 13th
child. And Godzilla is still crying. Hannah ditches the helicopter in the sea. Now
everything is happening on the left side of the screen. Nobody’s in the cockpit of
the helicopter. The chopper blades tilt, making a diagonal line across the entire
screen. That strange cry. It wants to go home—O like me, like my father. Now the
helicopter and its blades are perfectly vertical to the South China Sea. The chopper
is now engulfed by the sea, white with foam. Sayonara, Saigon! THIS SEEMS TO
BE THE LAST CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN INVOLVEMENT IN VIET-
NAM. Now everything appears in the center of the screen. Helicopter is everything.
Hannah is everything. My father’s framing never sways even when flowers call to
him. He edits as he films, he often told me. He’s still nowhere to be seen. Missing
in action somewhere in Cambodia, filming carpet bombing, my mother said. O the
chopper’s belly convulses. O it’s in immeasurable pain. The chopper’s door open
and the pilot and men in white shirts and dark pants spill out. IT’S ALSO BEEN THE
LARGEST SINGLE MOVEMENT OF PEOPLE IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICA IT-
SELF. The chopper’s blades are swirling in every frenzied direction. O suicidal lines.
Sayonara, Saigon! HILARY BROWN, ABC NEWS ABOARD THE ATTACK AIRCRAFT
CARRIER USS HANCOCK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA. White with foam. Now I see
buttons on History’s blouse.
–
From Hardly War (Wave Books, 2016)
Read more about Don Mee Choi
Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015
—Craig Santos Perez
Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.
The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us
praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of black
boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry
bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trick
or treat, smell my feet, give me something good
to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.
Let us praise the souls of brown girls who sew
our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into
smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me
something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas.
Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children
who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens
their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.
“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,” shout boys
camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls
of veterans who salute with their guns because
only triggers will pull God into their ruined
temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kids
masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,
let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes
are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned
rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trick
or treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us
praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,
Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead
fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers
of asthma, mothers of cancer clusters, mothers of
miscarriage — pray for us — because our costumes
won’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our
mothers of lost habitats, mothers of fallout, mothers
of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrow
will be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave —
—
From Poetry (April 2016)
Read more about Craig Santos Perez