- Story Cloth
A large blue cloth withborders made of appliquéd triangles
opens above Grandmother's laplike a road map. Rolls of
threads colorful as wild fruitssit beside her sewing basket.
She frisks over a pin
cushion for the perfectneedle she'll maneuver
like a swordfishto embed tails of brights& darks
against the placid blue. Withcross stitching,
she creates a village scene—
roofs latticed with earth brownthreads & covered in waves of
orange & mango yellowto illustrate how fire canlick thatch
& bamboo. Below the huts,her needle dresses the soldiers
in lines of sneaky olive green,their AK-47s in tar black strings. [End Page 122]
Thin cords of lime & pinkfill in sashes on each Hmong man, woman & child
sewn in a terrified runor fall. Crow black stitches for
their hemp clothes,mud brown for their sandals & firebrick red
for each bullet hole.
She pushes her needle,stringing blood into an unfinished Mekong. [End Page 123]
Burlee Vang (burleevang@hotmail.com) is one of the first published Hmong American voices. His works have appeared in Ploughshares, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Massachusetts Review, and the anthologies Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers (2006) and Highway 99: A Literary Journey Through California's Great Central Valley (1996), among others. He holds an MFA from California State University, Fresno.