Lantern Review: Issue 5
From Prometheus Nguyen
Scene 1: 1991
Stage is black. The incarnations of Prometheus are scattered, seated throughout the audience. Kronos stands Stage Center, arms folded behind his back and head down.
Lights up on Kronos. He raises his head and begins.
Kronos
San Jose Mercury News
Headline
New Year’s Day
January First, 1991:
Kronos Nguyen, a twenty-five year old man
and resident of San Jose, CA, was killed in an
altercation with the police.
Shots were fired at 9:32 pm
outside a liquor store at the corner of
Senter Road and Capital Expressway.
Officers claim that Nguyen was threatening
authorities with a knife
Witnesses on the scene
claim that Nguyen was unarmed
Takeo Rivera
that he had no weapon
that this was yet another incident of
police brutality.
Kronos Nguyen is survived by his two parents,
immigrants from Vietnam,
and one sister,
eighteen-year-old
Prometheus Nguyen.
(lights down)
18
(rises from seat, begins walking down to the stage)
I was made in murder
conceived in the fusion of red blood cells
with concrete
(lights up)
I was born from the bullet wounds
in my brother’s rib cage
38
(rises from seat, begins walking down to the stage)
I was interpellated
named by sounds of lead through bone
made subject by subjugation
I was made flesh by citational matrices
made vagrancies in the eyes of Power