Minh Pham is currently working towards an MFA in Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside. He was born in Saigon, Vietnam and became a Riverside, CA native at age eight. He gained an interest in writing during his childhood when his father told him Vietnamese folktales and when his mother told him stories of how she survived the Vietnam War.

PTSD

I know your brain is made out of coils of bullets
Because you told me all you hear
Is gunfire.
But other fathers have been able to win the war
Inside their heads. They are able to forget
The scent of burnt flesh, the taste of metal
From exploding shell fragments, the sounds
Of a woman’s scream
For her dead child,
And the feeling of holding their
Uniformed brother’s
Cold body in their hands.
How come you can’t
Fight the war that continues inside your head
Since 1975?