Hill 937. Let me offer you from Sa Huỳnh
copper bowls and lingling-o, that double-headed
amulet of milky nephrite green. Our ceremony

calls for this. Now hold my spirit steady.
At its base, regard my grandmother—some one-
thousand, seven-hundred-sixty-eight years later,

south of Đà Nẵng—coded daily with its embers.
Enemy of State or Enemy of Earth, who could
channel differentials, that which hunted people

like a nation in a nation? Let me offer us that
monumental sconce meaning: nobody heard you
burning, but I heard you burning, comrade.

Rise up. For that evidential dawn might shimmer
tempest red, our later modes of slaughter or address.
So let me rise up with you, comrade, shaking off

these golden embers from each wing. And let me
tell you of our people and our beastly creatures
walking with us—double-headed oxen and red

double-headed lions—resurrected with dark brass,
carnelian, and jade. I’ll meet you there, upon a hill
inside a country, that which hunted years

into a ceremony, that which called us skyward
so one day I’d meet you, ma.