of choice: palmiers, profiteroles, and thin, pale yellow French mayonnaise, slathered on skinny baguettes that stretch to an ever-extending horizon (his words exactly). Asian women are not attractive. Says Henri. There are no other Vietnamese in Lausanne, not one, no Asians of any stripe besides tourists, so my cousin equates feminine Asian features with his sisters. To Henri only Euros are attractive; kissing an Asian would be equivalent to kissing one of his sisters. A literal equivalence, that is. To his knowledge there is no Swiss (or French, or German, or Vietnamese) saying for “that’s like kissing your sister,” as in, “earning second place is like kissing your sister.” It’s just one of those things that doesn’t translate very well. Not too easy explaining the American English meaning to him—no, no, we’re not really talking about incest, Henri—but once he catches on, he’s fascinated. Young Henri fancies himself a poet, and a language connoisseur, like his father before him. He hopes to become the first Viet-Swiss poet of prominence. There are Swiss-Viet poets living in Vietnam, writing in Vietnamese, he explains, but no Viet-Swiss living in Switzerland, writing in French and English and German, blah blah blah blah blah, I always tune him out at this point. All his conjecture seems pointless to me, as his poetry is crap. He’s not going to be the first anything. But I have to admire his insistence on greatness in the face of incompetence: it’s his most American quality. Also, paradoxically, his most Vietnamese. These days poetry has little purchase with young people in the U.S., but it’s strangely popular on the campus of my college, the not-very-esteemed College of Northeastern Virginia. For the last two years CNV students have been treated to the literary stylings of an anonymous “campus bard,” who scrawls his chalk verses on the sidewalk outside the Student Center. The concluding lines of his most famous poem: 2 rides diverged @ the kegger and i chose the sorority girl less banged
For days after the poem appeared, students prevented campus groundskeepers from washing it away. The photography club was eventually enlisted to preserve it permanently. Conventional wisdom says the final lines should be read figuratively, as 76