Monthly, my family calls from Vietnamto inform us about the dead.Their voices amplified through the speakerphonewhile my mother sits upright in her bed& performs a variety of mundane tasks:sewing, word finds, removing nail polish.Of course I want to assume things:dead body, dead butter-yellow lawn—If I try hard enough, I can gathereach story, like marbles, into my mouthspit them into the drain & watch                                    as hair climbs out.Every month, a new body washes upin conversation:a great aunt, a dog, a cousin or two, but nowit’s my father’s first wife.Four-days-dead in her bathroommy uncle says                                    — she lived alone, abandoned                                    years earlier, by her husband.                                    Buried in a backyard                                    somewhere in that roadside village                                    the woman he left in Vietnam                                    to come to America                                    he promised he’d return                                    for her & their two sons                                    but instead married my mother.— well, she was found dead.Four-days-dead, in a bathroommy father once built for her.Buried in my uncle’s backyard.Had to kill the dog too.It kept trying to dig her out.Either anyone can be forgottenor only the forgotten can bringforth a good haunting, spanningthe chasm of the living, above whicha bridge made of ghosts, full of ghostswaiting to be summoned through                                    the receiverone by one by one by dead one.I can see them all                                    gatheringin the pixelated air. A patch of lightruptured by dust. I know my motherwill make a great ghost one day.They love her, the ghosts. They watch herall the time. She knows this, but she just sits thereunbothered, biting the seam of a white dressuntil it splits.