Kissing in Vietnamese

Vuong has said in interviews that for illiterate people, such as his mother and grandmother, the body is their main way of communicating. This poem is filled with words that describe the body, including “thigh” (Line 7), “torso” (Line 8), “lips” (Line 12), “nose” (Line 13), “cheek” (Line 13), “sweat” (Line 15), “lungs” (Line 16), and “wrist” (Line 17). The lens of this poem itself focuses on kissing—a way people express love through the body—and the memories of all the things that have happened to the bodies around the main character of the grandmother. The poem of 155 words uses words that describe the body and body parts, seven times, including “a body is falling apart” (Line 5), “flames are making their way back / through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh” (Lines 6-7), “your torso / would dance from exit wounds” (Lines 8-9), “pursed lips” (Line 12), “nose pressed to cheek” (Line 13), “sweat pearls into drops of gold / inside her lungs” (Lines 15-16), “death also, is clutching your wrist” (Line 17), and again, “a body is still / falling apart” (Lines 20-21).

Wars are not won by words, by arguments, or with written documents. Wars are won with violence and brutality on the body. The poem repeats the line “somewhere, a body is falling apart” (Line 5) as “a body is still / falling apart” (Lines 20-21) at the end of the poem. The phrase ‘a body’ is intentionally ambiguous. The body is not identified as a particular person with a history, name, job title, or even a gender. Every person has a body which can be the recipient or target of violence. In other places the speaker obscures the identity of bodies, such as when Vuong writes how “flames are making their way back / through the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh” (Lines 6-7), and how this unknown boy can “dance from exit wounds” (Line 9) when he leaves the house. This places the body, rather than the personality of the one who has the body, front and center. It makes them anonymous, the way that guns, bombs, fire, and other bringers of destruction treat bodies as anonymous fodder to be destroyed or consumed. This gives the sense that each body is dehumanized by the war. They are made only into statistics and not people—not someone’s child or grandchild.

At the same time, Vuong’s language shows his appreciation of the body itself. The phrase, “the intricacies of a young boy’s thigh” (Lines 6-7), points to the way the thigh is constructed. It is intricate, and delicate; it is a masterpiece of creation that is too quickly destroyed by explosions or bullets. The torso can “dance” (Line 9). The sweat of the speaker is like “gold” (Line 15) that “pearls” (Line 15) inside the lungs of the grandmother. The way that Vuong describes the bodies elevates them to a level of preciousness, which poses a stark contrast to the way that the perpetrators of the war treat the bodies, as anonymous fodder, easily destroyed.