Sabine Huynh

Sabine Huynh was born in Saigon in 1972, grew up in Lyon, France, worked and studied in England and the U.S., before moving to Jerusalem with her Israeli husband in 2001. Her home is now in Tel Aviv. She holds a PhD in linguistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she taught from 2002 to 2008. She was still in primary school when she started writing poetry, and ghostwriting for classmates, in French. She has two unpublished as yet novels in French. Sabine also translates poetry from Hebrew to French: Uri Orlev's Poems from Bergen-Belsen, 1944. Some of her poems and short stories appeared in The Dudley Review, Poetica Magazine and The Jerusalem Post (French edition). 

The following works are copyright © 2008. All rights reserved. No distribution or reprinting in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  

Weaning

It’s in hunger
that I write best
about you, mother
when you don’t look
above my shoulder
presentable you are absent
or else you appear
your mad gaze searching
for my readiness to admire
but I was not born
to approve of you, mother.

It’s in hunger
that I remember best
how your love lacked
milk, mother
my mother so called
my property, so proper
beautifully groomed girl
who eyed my teacher after
school hoping he would think
I was your sister
or even your mother.

It’s in hunger
that you wove best
mother, I wish you were
an otter, short-legged
mustached, anything but
this sleek hysterical hyena
who couldn’t swim
only cat walked, no fish
remains for me
you relinquished mother
masked my pleas with a hood.

It’s in hunger you taught me
that less is best
how to sever
love for ever.

  

Childhood Sailing

Come here and let me tell you how
the colporteur made up stories of
childhood sailing on shallow lakes,
children out there meeting their fate.
“Help!”, screamed Pierre when it rained.
He was an only child you see,
paired up on a boat with a girl
who scolded, “Stop crying, you sissy.”

“What do you know about waves and
bad temper, craves and bad weather?”
Yet she liked him all the same,
since she knew he got slapped again
and again by the Mother Superior.
“Superior, my ass!”, was Pierre’s answer
to her retrieving his eyeglasses
from the stinky forbidding depths.

Once the figure-of-eight knot was tied,
and Pierre stopped wobbling on his legs,
he decided to teach the girl a lesson.
The boys caught up with her on the hill,
grabbed her and at the count of three
threw her to the grey flapping surface.
At the age of ten our lads were not yet strong,
right before the water her body landed.

In a big thorn bush providence provided,
she tore her swimsuit, lost a sandal.
Away the boys ran, their mirthless laugh
stinging her. Alone she found herself
sitting by such a desolate looking lake.
Adrift she felt on dry land, while she was
used to testing the ups and downs
of life in a world devoid of grown-ups.

Talk of the devil, a voice whispered
words of consolation in her tiny ear,
while a hairy shaking hand patted
her bruised and spongy little thigh.
Let me take care of these water blisters,
with healing seaweed I will rub them.
Lie down, close your eyes and relax,
in no time we will both feel much happier.

Buy this book and you will know
what the dauntless girl did on that day,
if Pierre survived the next tempest,
if the lost sandal was ever found.
For another ten pence this make-believe
manual is yours, find out how merciful
children can sometimes be on a rowing boat,
merrily sailing on what looks like still waters.

  

Cultured Pearls

Born in Vietnam in nineteen seventy two,
I was raised in France from nineteen seventy six.
Born in Hong Kong in nineteen eighty two,
you were raised in Boston since the age of three.
And you, Diêu, who lost your name on the way
from Vietnam, you were born in nineteen eighty
three in a place that once existed in Thailand.
There were no cots in that camp, destroyed since.
Your parents fled a fate doomed by war,
their hometown they left for a makeshift place.

Here we are today, the three of us together,
me, sitting on this coffee table, you, sprawling
in deep armchairs, mingling our long silky hair,
sharing bits of story-seasoned oatmeal cookies,
and sipping spangled mocha in Starbucks’ America.
I remember cold showers, I remember crowded markets,
I remember white beaches, Cap Saint-Jacques in a Jeep.
I remember red ants’stories in which babies died.
I remember Grandma’s bed under which we had to hide.
I remember helicopter noise, I remember bomb alerts.

My parents landed in Paris with three children,
yours landed in New York their heart swollen
with hatred for China. And you, Diêu, who lost
your name, your parents arrived in America
with a hope token worth three dollars. How
many years did it take them to rise from
moonlighting to sunshine? From a blighted to
a bashful life? Two times five, two lives in one.

There’s also that other friend, born Zhen Zhu Wong
in warm Hong Kong, lived a while in bleak London,
before going to Florida where she changed her name
to Emmy and her nickname to Chipmunk, before
disappearing for good, bouncy little dumpling.
After wartime migration how can there still be
white pearls? Who is any colour anyway?

 
Tea and French at the Love's

It is ten minutes before tea time
And Natalie Love’s weekly French lesson
Mr. Love comes to pick me up
He whistles a tune while driving me
To his brick-built dwelling
Mrs. Love is waiting behind
The lace curtains, in her spotless kitchen
She smiles at me and runs up, her apron on
Fat mauve plastic hair-curlers aloft

I am going up to the bedroom
Natalie Love is following me
A tray between her teeth
She is careful not to spill any tea
On the green carpet that covers
Everything from floor to ceiling

The bedroom is tiny
With two twin beds
And bedspreads with pink flowers
It is always so warm in there
It always smells too good
Like toilet deodorant
Far too scented a pot-pourri
It makes me feel ill

Natalie Love’s exercise book
Is filled with close letters
That remind her full cheeks
Her French smells of sweet butter
She chews toffee, which gets
In the way of proper pronunciation

The tea is not very good
Because of the curds
The biscuits are too dry
But I eat them all
I have chocolate all over my hands
Emma calls her mother up for a napkin
But I ask her to go downstairs
Then I take my pocket-mirror out
And lick the chocolate between my teeth

Before leaving the Love's home
I drop by at the loo
The bathroom is immaculate
So clean and immobile
That I suddenly feel the urge to do
something like climbing on the scale
With my shoes on
The needle oscillates
I hop a bit, it gets wild
I am going down the stairs on my hands
They are watching TV

Mrs. Love puts her arm round
her daughter's waist, smiling cheerfully
I am waving them good-bye
I am already in the car
My gaze fixed on the smells-good
Cardboard Christmas tree
Mr. Love is whistling peacefully
It is almost dark
Au revoir, see you next week
And merci beaucoup!