Michelle Vong

when one is displaced 

              displaced / dis-stantly placed

from their home, where does one begin

looking, searching, creating 

for a new place to belong

           place to belong / their home 

i am standing 2,000 miles from where i grew up

shoveling goat poop before i am returning to school 

in a few months, soon hands will be 

flipping through ivory colored pages,

but first i need the money, 

the farmer tells me she went to school at cornell, 

before she decided she wanted to spend most of her days,

among hay bales and muddy fields, 

she went to a conference recently, 

and one of the speakers was telling her that she 

was cranky all week in an unfamiliar place, 

it wasn’t until she saw another asian woman in the aisle 

of the grocery store, did she beg the woman for restaurants to

eat at, 

how does a bowl of pho, or a plate of fish and rice, remind someone

so suddenly of home? 

home / a smell, a place, a memory, a place

a place to belong

i am raking the animal stalls now, and my hands 

know they will slowly, slowly

slowly, 

but surely, find themselves clinging onto a pair of utensils, 

digging into a bowl of beef broth,

and soon soon soon,

i know where i belong