Avenue............................................Stanley Kim

Sandman | Brooks McCall | mixed media | 20 x 16 in.

Te Talon 2022

Study of Matisse’s Blue Nude | Lucas Dinh | oil pastels | 23 x 17 in.

Woodberry Forest School 103

Avenue | Stanley Kin | New York, New York | digital photography

104 Te Talon 2022

DIRECTIVE 16

free verse by Jimmy Dinh

Trough the thin sheet of glass on the twentieth foor, Ho Chi Minh City stretches out like an eagle soaring on powerful wings or a bubble on the edge of bursting. Te butcher’s doors are pulled shut— no bikes, no cars. Only fern green uniforms scatter beside crimson fences that block the roads like fower petals blooming. Our lively city withers, its limbs torn apart. Every thirty minutes, another siren wails as a dull white cover of protective suits streams toward the ambulances.

Te safe circle that we rebuilt for months collapses as the next wave foods Ho Chi Minh City. For the third time, dreary clouds engulf the sun. For the third time, I stand on the hardwood foor, follow the red fash as it subsides with the wailing.

Woodberry Forest School 105