Slices with a Hmong knife

I want to write an image poem and give you slices of who I am.
But first, I must board a plane to Laos
and I must buy a Hmong knife, forged by Hmong hands
from iron out of the belly of a scared mountain
besides fires that consume lush green to fee Hmong mouths,

Then I must visit the village of my birth.
Perhaps the streets of earth and dust (and mud when it rains),
the single-room houses with their bamboo walls and
    bamboo-leaf roofs,
the plates of rice and meat left for spirits of ancestors,
the single spoon shared by a household during meager meals
(the spirits are better than the living)--
perhaps all these things will help me remember
those lost nights when magical words from distant tongues
    cured all fears.

Then I must board a plan to the U.S. and
I must return to Omaha, Nebraska,
where my family first landed after our long exodus from Laos,
where our sponsors taught us how to use sicks, toilets,
    and the TV,
where I almost drowned in our sponsor's pool
and got lost from my parents in a hospital elevator.
Perhaps all these things will help me remember
my parents' half-smiles and empty faces as the were forced
    to become children again.

Then I must drive to Appleton, Wisconsin,
(as my father did only six months after arriving)
where I learned how to speak English and how to forget my
    my native tongue,
where I met my first American friend and my first
    American bigot,
where I played with friends in secret places in trees
that seemed to reach their roots to Laos.
Perhaps all these things will help me remember
the grizzled face of a boy innocently torn my two cultures.

And upon arriving back in Oshkosh,
I will find that knife is dull and I don have
    a sharpening stone
and the traveling has left my face white like my ancestors',
so the poem must wait silently kicking in its womb
beside its growing twin, who hums quietly in Hmong.

--Bamboo among the Oaks by Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans Edited by Mai Neng Moua

Please comment and tell me what you think about this poem. Thank you for your time.