BINGH
There It Is, the Scene of Agony
The children in the neighborhood come here
whenever it rains. Half-naked, they are out
under the warm water. There he is—boy in
boxer-shorts—happy to be released. Happy
to be in among the giddiness and banter the
children toss into the rain-soaked air. There’s
a concrete pavement in the back of the house
where dishes are washed by hand after supper.
An uncle or a cousin fills a bucket with water
and splashes it across the cold pavement.
The area is thus smoothed over. Once water
is thrown on, boys can slip-and-slide on its
surface. That’s when the shorts would come
off from the rain-soaked children! They go
careening on their buttocks, loving the thrill
of the glides.
~ ~ ~
The grown-ups would pluck him from the
merriment, place him in the center of their
family room. From an altar, a bronze Buddha
and framed photos of their dead look down,
taking it all in. He’s the center-stage as they
would strip him if his shorts weren’t off already.
You may have heard of Asian women being
demure, passive. No, not the girls and the women
in this clan. They’re the first to jump at him,
take his boyish member in their hands, slowly
stroke until he grows hard. They’d laugh their
hearty laughter while one of the sisters commences
to squeeze the first drops of his pre-cum with
one hand, cupping beneath it with the other.
~ ~ ~
He’s merely the oddity they toy with whenever
they are horny—meaning he’s never left
alone long in the attic. Except for these times,
he isn’t allowed to come down at all. However
whenever it rains, they’d come to fetch him.
Both good times and bad when it starts to pour.
It isn’t a beneficent act when they free him—
they long to see more and more five- to ten-year
-olds’ penises from the neighborhood. Reel ’em
in, boy! Boy-toy, boy-bait! And there it goes
again: Hardi Har Har. A seemingly innocent story
of rainy days in Da Nang suddenly intermixed with
raucous Vietnamese laughter and little boy’s
semen. How often does this scene get played
and re-played? As many times as rain soaks
the rice paddies of this lawless land. As many
times as he learns to endure this scene, as he learns
now how to do/undo what was done/undone to him.
N.B: The final line incorporates the title of Chen Chen’s poem, “For I Will Do/Undo What Was Done/Undone to Me”
Bingh studied literature and creative writing with Jim Crenner at Hobart College, where he founded and edited SCRY! A Nexus of Politics and the Arts (Anne Carson was among the contributors). From 2015-18, he wrote theater reviews for the San Diego Reader (under the name Binh H. Nguyen). Bingh holds an MFA degree in poetry from SDSU and is the founder, curator, and all-around impresario of Thru a Soft Tube, a monthly reading series in its fifth year in San Diego. His poems have recently received attention from The Common, Crab Orchard Review, HIV Here & Now, samfiftyfour_literary, Saving Daylight Zine, Poetry & Art at the San Diego Art Institute, the San Diego Poetry Annual 2020, and the San Diego Bards Against Hunger Anthology. You can find him at www.bingharoundthecity.com.
Art by Tyler Moore