projects

projects | artwork | publications

With gratitude to everyone involved; I’m honored to lend my voice to these amazing projects.

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San José Story Map Project
San José State University’s Deep Humanities Initiative

Đi Về Little Saigon (Return)

by Samantha Lê

Immigrant road, a far-reaching whip,
and me, returning to my origin 
     with new skin
to parade through that crowded cul-de-sac
of adopted mothers, cousins, aunties
(chị cả, bác, cô, dì, thím, mợ),
in-laws, exes, sisters and grannies,
who are all related in the mythical
entanglement of họ hàng,
and whom I’ve spent decades weeding
from my carefully cultivated plot.

Not rootless but wanderer just the same
through the bloodline of dragons
and immortal gods, born of the same womb
to the same familial bondage that binds
as blindly as faith; how do I carry on
when distant traditions keep me 
      in my place?

- Story Map Project Honorable Mention

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Poetry on the Move
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate

From the Platform on First Street

by Samantha Lê

a dispassionate rain sprinkles colors 
onto glassy morning tracks 
faded creatures in shapes of blue 
     and sleeplessness — going

gone the warning whistles of the watchful 
     conductor — gone
the smoke that caught the wind
and stained the air

- Car Cards: Poetry on the Move Winner

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Art:21 Screening and Poetry Invitational
San José Museum of Art & Poetry Center San José

Carrot Mother and Child

by Samantha Lê

Child, taproot of my taproot, 
     from sunflower 
orange pigments of mud and fire, 
     from bleached 
tentacles that reach into the mysterious 
     soil to collect 
raindrops, comes your sweet, 
     woody essence.
Autumn’s thin light webs your new skin, 
early spring breeze—still waking from icy 
slumber—crowns your head.  
     I hold you tight;
squeeze, elongate you into the proper 
     shape, 
but you grow stubby and plain, 
     draped in drab, 
on your head, a yellowing Brussels sprout 
instead of a wispy rosette —
     solanum tuberosum! 
Impostor.  You dig and pull at a 
     mother’s heart. 

- In response to “Carrot Mother and Child” 
by Peter Vandenberg

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East Side Voices Project
San José State University Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program, Writer-in Residence & Donor Circle for the Arts

Catching Crawdads

by Samantha Lê

The days were still warm when I biked 
down to the Mercado Latino for a piece 
     of liver. You know 
that place on Seven Trees with the 
     caliente stock girl. 
Back in those days—those sprinkler-jumping 
summer days when I was still a kid—
I could hear the entire East Side right 
     outside my window. 

Kids kicked balls in the street, 
moms whispered stories on front porches 
     (you know Delores’ 
old man took to that ugly green couch 
      with a torch), 
and dads waxed their Rivieras 
      on brown lawns, 
talking about the good old days 
when they were jocks 
and ass-loving ladies’ men, 
the Clovers played on my dad’s 
     cassette deck (“I took my troubles 
down to Madame Rue. You know 
that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth.”)

Yeah, the days were still warm when I biked 
to the Mercado Latino for liver. I took 
     those rusted organs 
down to Hellyer Creek, tied the liver 
     to a string and waited 
for the crawdads to sing.  First 
      my parents said, 
don’t eat things that eat meat; 
      then they said, don’t eat 
things with faces that eat other things.
So I lit the firecrackers and stuck them 
in the crawdads’ claws; blew them 
      up like Jaws. 

Then one day, for no reason, I took the 
     crawdads home, 
rolled them in cornmeal and fried them up
like chimichangas. We sat around laughing, 
     sucking on faces. 

- James Phelan Award

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Santa Clara County Poetry Project
Santa Clara County Poet Laureate

To Myself at Nine

by Samantha Lê

I remember you: mud-colored 
eyes taking snapshots 
of strange cityscapes— 
billboard faces sold you beauty 
you couldn’t understand. 

Gilded sidewalks. 
Flashing neon lights. Sharp turns 
dead-ended at a basement apartment 
on O’Farrell St. Bare mattress 
on the living room floor 
soaked up daydreams.	 

You, with savage toes trapped 
in pleather sneakers—
blistered pride. Second-hand 
clothes that confined
and reduced your body
to clumps of clay. 

You, still learning to speak.
Sounds forced from your mouth 
like body parts 
through a meat grinder
—tongue stripped, 
jaws restructured. 

You, who once surged 
like typhoon waves, 
was suddenly as silent 
as a bamboo jungle without wind, 
curving inward, 
shrinking orchid petal. 

You, who secretly scrubbed 
off skin for a lighter shade— 
each flake, a memory 
deliberately left behind.

- Santa Clara County Poetry Prize

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Ai ~ Annotated Bibliography
Sounds & Silences