—for my Mama, for Dad, and for Victoria aka lil Goat, for A-Team
hi there, my name is Andrew Tran
my friends call me Andy, or sometimes
asshole, or sometimes a painting
at a house party in NE D.C. / i live in VA,
right off Braddock rd by a shopping center
named after a King, but I think it’s artifice,
these days, i can’t tell what’s concrete,
and what’s fake, but i know what’s true
is that i worry about my friends in D.C.,
constantly, it’s at this time perpetual,
like my mom’s lower back pain that began
when she fell off her blue bicycle as she rode
down the street away from my cul-de-sac
towards my old elementary school,
when she skirted off the sidewalk,
down the street, to the other side
where there was a forest trail,
and a house with a MAGA sign
stabbed into the front lawn,
grass cut from a man who looked tired,
lonely, desperate, as he sucked
his red striped straw, slurping
on Coca-Cola (presumably),
from a Styrofoam cup, his eyes hollow and red,
my mom’s face smeared and wet from a puddle,
each of them refusing to look at each other,
and in ways I realize this scene
may seem dramatic and strange,
in ways that i realize
may seem indecipherable,
but with language, don’t we try to capture
the essence of what is the moment,
which is the experience, revealed through time?
my friend asked me what an arbiter was,
and i told her to look at her phone screen,
and check her reflection, so she could realize
the power she had in the eyes of her own.