creole craft

creole craft

upon contact 

you are part citizen 

part dia  spore—

bad moon born under 

babel-restrict dystopia 

you are lang-locked & mono-lingualized 

you were once Thorn 

reutter yourself across your tongue’s shadow   

you phonate typhoon-ô

stress the repressed airstream—  

hushhhh your prickled persona’s dental fricative

thôi—

you reawaken   Thôrn 

across recalibrated phônics

your overseas diacritic signifier-delays

onomatopoeic protrusion 

you rune-amplify nucleus vowel 

cacophonous circumflex ^

soprano-imbue onto your trachea 

across transliterasia 

mutate monotone anglophone 

the english still thhhhrashes

imperial thorns in throat 

constrict your airflow 

asphyxiates your v  tn m s

torn between alpha-breaths  

dormant việt-air 

still lingers to air-bend

your name becomes airborne

seizes articulation breath of the disremembered—  

you dys-place aberrated accent onto Thôôôôôôôôôôôôrn

about the poet

Winston Lê is a Vietnamese-Chinese poet, interdisciplinary artist, and cultural worker who resides in Langley, BC. His writing has been featured in Composed: anthology of poetry 2024, Poetry Pause, periodicities, Sparkling Tongue Press, Ekphrasis Magazine, pagefiftyone, and filling Station. His debut chapbook, translanguaging was shortlisted for the 2018 Broken Pencil Zine Awards. translanguaging became the basis of Elaina Nguyen’s scholarly thesis on diasporic futurities entitled, On Vietnamese Canadian Futurities: generational and temporal invocations of refugeeness.  In March 2024, Lê spent a two-week tenure as the poet-in-residence at Studio Faire, an artist residency located in Nèrac, France.