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tặng mẹ [và ba tôi]

for my mother [& father]

The landscape crossed out with a pen

reappears here

Bei Dao

Contents

Title Page

Note to Reader

Dedication

Threshold

I.

Telemachus

Trojan

Aubade with Burning City

A Little Closer to the Edge

Immigrant Haibun

Always & Forever

My Father Writes from Prison

Headfirst

In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphin’s Wet Back

The Gift

Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds

II.

Thanksgiving 2006

Homewrecker

Of Thee I Sing

Because It’s Summer

Into the Breach

Anaphora as Coping Mechanism

Seventh Circle of Earth

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Eurydice

Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown ): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952

Queen Under The Hill

III.

Torso of Air

Prayer for the Newly Damned

To My Father / To My Future Son

Deto(nation)

Ode to Masturbation

Notebook Fragments

The Smallest Measure

Daily Bread

Odysseus Redux

Logophobia

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

Devotion

Notes

Also by Ocean Vuong

Acknowledgments

Copyright

Special Thanks

Threshold

In the body, where everything has a price,

I was a beggar. On my knees,

I watched, through the keyhole, not

the man showering, but the rain

falling through him: guitar strings snapping

over his globed shoulders.

He was singing, which is why

I remember it. His voice—

it filled me to the core

like a skeleton. Even my name

knelt down inside me, asking

to be spared.

He was singing. It is all I remember.

For in the body, where everything has a price,

I was alive. I didn’t know

there was a better reason.

That one morning, my father would stop

—a dark colt paused in downpour—

& listen for my clutched breath

behind the door. I didn’t know the cost

of entering a song—was to lose

your way back.

So I entered. So I lost.

I lost it all with my eyes

wide open.

I

Telemachus

Like any good son, I pull my father out

of the water, drag him by his hair

through white sand, his knuckles carving a trail

the waves rush in to erase. Because the city

beyond the shore is no longer

where we left it. Because the bombed

cathedral is now a cathedral

of trees. I kneel beside him to see how far

I might sink. Do you know who I am,

Ba? But the answer never comes. The answer

is the bullet hole in his back, brimming

with seawater. He is so still I think

he could be anyone’s father, found

the way a green bottle might appear

at a boy’s feet containing a year

he has never touched. I touch

his ears. No use. I turn him

over. To face it. The cathedral

in his sea-black eyes. The face

not mine—but one I will wear

to kiss all my lovers good-night:

the way I seal my father’s lips

with my own & begin

the faithful work of drowning.

Trojan

A finger’s worth of dark from daybreak, he steps

into a red dress. A flame caught

in a mirror the width of a coffin. Steel glinting

in the back of his throat. A flash, a white

asterisk. Look

how he dances. The bruise-blue wallpaper peeling

into hooks as he twirls, his horse

-head shadow thrown on the family

portraits, glass cracking beneath

its stain. He moves like any

other fracture, revealing the briefest doors. The dress

petaling off him like the skin

of an apple. As if their swords

aren’t sharpening

inside him. This horse with its human

face. This belly full of blades

& brutes. As if dancing could stop the heart

of his murderer from beating

between his ribs. How easily a boy in a dress

the red of shut eyes

vanishes

beneath the sound of his own

galloping. How a horse will run until it breaks

into weather—into wind. How like

the wind, they will see him. They will see him

clearest

when the city burns.

Aubade with Burning City

South Vietnam, April 29, 1975: Armed Forces Radio played Irving

Berlin’s “White Christmas” as a code to begin Operation Frequent

Wind, the ultimate evacuation of American civilians and Vietnamese

refugees by helicopter during the fall of Saigon.

Milkflower petals in the street

like pieces of a girl’s dress.

May your days be merry and bright ...

He fills a teacup with champagne, brings it to her lips.

Open, he says.

She opens.

Outside, a soldier spits out

his cigarette as footsteps fill the square like stones

fallen from the sky. May

all your Christmases be white

as the traffic guard unstraps his holster.

His fingers running the hem

of her white dress. A single candle.

Their shadows: two wicks.

A military truck speeds through the intersection, children

shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled

through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog

lies panting in the road. Its hind legs

crushed into the shine

of a white Christmas.

On the bed stand, a sprig of magnolia expands like a secret heard

for the first time.

The treetops glisten and children listen, the chief of police

facedown in a pool of Coca-Cola.

A palm-sized photo of his father soaking

beside his left ear.

The song moving through the city like a widow.

A white ... A white ... I’m dreaming of a curtain of snow

falling from her shoulders.

Snow scraping against the window. Snow shredded

with gunfire. Red sky.

Snow on the tanks rolling over the city walls.

A helicopter lifting the living just

out of reach.

The city so white it is ready for ink.

The radio saying run run run.

Milkflower petals on a black dog

like pieces of a girl’s dress.

May your days be merry and bright . She is saying

something neither of them can hear. The hotel rocks

beneath them. The bed a field of ice.

Don’t worry, he says, as the first shell flashes

their faces, my brothers have won the war

and tomorrow ...

The lights go out.

I’m dreaming. I’m dreaming ...

to hear sleigh bells in the snow ...

In the square below: a nun, on fire,

runs silently toward her god—

Open, he says.

She opens.

A Little Closer to the Edge

Young enough to believe nothing

will change them, they step, hand in hand,

into the bomb crater. The night full

of black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks

from shattering against her cheek, now dims

like a miniature moon behind her hair.

In this version, the snake is headless—stilled

like a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles.

He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing

another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables

inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press

into her—as the field shreds itself

with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a home

out of hip bones. O mother,

O minute hand, teach me

how to hold a man the way thirst

holds water. Let every river envy

our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body

like a season. Where apples thunder

the earth with red hooves. & I am your son.

Immigrant Haibun

The road which leads me to you is safe

even when it runs into oceans.

Edmond Jabès

*

Then, as if breathing, the sea swelled beneath us. If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once. That a woman on a sinking ship becomes a life raft—no matter how soft her skin. While I slept, he burned his last violin to keep my feet warm. He lay beside me and placed a word on the nape of my neck, where it melted into a bead of whiskey. Gold rust down my back. We had been sailing for months. Salt in our sentences. We had been sailing—but the edge of the world was nowhere in sight.

*

When we left it, the city was still smoldering. Otherwise it was a perfect spring morning. White hyacinths gasped in the embassy lawn. The sky was September-blue and the pigeons went on pecking at bits of bread scattered from the bombed bakery. Broken baguettes. Crushed croissants. Gutted cars. A carousel spinning its blackened horses. He said the shadow of missiles growing larger on the sidewalk looked like god playing an air piano above us. He said There is so much I need to tell you.

*

Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven—waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through. A machete on the deck left out to dry. My back turned to him. My feet in the eddies. He crouches beside me, his breath a misplaced weather. I let him cup a handful of the sea into my hair and wring it out. The smallest pearls—and all for you. I open my eyes. His face between my hands, wet as a cut. If we make it to shore, he says, I will name our son after this water. I will learn to love a monster. He smiles. A white hyphen where his lips should be. There are seagulls above us. There are hands fluttering between the constellations, trying to hold on.

*

The fog lifts. And we see it. The horizon—suddenly gone. An aqua sheen leading to the hard drop. Clean and merciful—just like he wanted. Just like the fairy tales. The one where the book closes and turns to laughter in our laps. I pull the mast to full sail. He throws my name into the air. I watch the syllables crumble into pebbles across the deck.

*

Furious roar. The sea splitting at the bow. He watches it open like a thief staring into his own heart: all bones and splintered wood. Waves rising on both sides. The ship encased in liquid walls. Look! he says, I see it now! He’s jumping up and down. He’s kissing the back of my wrist as he clutches the wheel. He laughs but his eyes betray him. He laughs despite knowing he has ruined every beautiful thing just to prove beauty cannot change him. And here’s the kicker: there’s a cork where the sunset should be. It was always there. There’s a ship made from toothpicks and superglue. There’s a ship in a wine bottle on the mantel in the middle of a Christmas party—eggnog spilling from red Solo cups. But we keep sailing anyway. We keep standing at the bow. A wedding-cake couple encased in glass. The water so still now. The water like air, like hours. Everyone’s shouting or singing and he can’t tell whether the song is for him—or the burning rooms he mistook for childhood. Everyone’s dancing while a tiny man and woman are stuck inside a green bottle thinking someone is waiting at the end of their lives to say Hey! You didn’t have to go this far. Why did you go so far? Just as a baseball bat crashes through the world.

*

If you must know anything, know that you were born because no one else was coming. The ship rocked as you swelled inside me: love’s echo hardening into a boy. Sometimes I feel like an ampersand. I wake up waiting for the crush. Maybe the body is the only question an answer can’t extinguish. How many kisses have we crushed to our lips in prayer—only to pick up the pieces? If you must know, the best way to understand a man is with your teeth. Once, I swallowed the rain through a whole green thunderstorm. Hours lying on my back, my girlhood open. The field everywhere beneath me. How sweet. That rain. How something that lives only to fall can be nothing but sweet. Water whittled down to intention. Intention into nourishment. Everyone can forget us—as long as you remember.

*

Summer in the mind.

God opens his other eye:

two moons in the lake.

Always & Forever

Open this when you need me most,

he said, as he slid the shoe box, wrapped

in duct tape, beneath my bed. His thumb,

still damp from the shudder between mother’s

thighs, kept circling the mole above my brow.

The devil’s eye blazed between his teeth

or was he lighting a joint? It doesn’t matter. Tonight

I wake & mistake the bathwater wrung

from mother’s hair for his voice. I open

the shoe box dusted with seven winters

& here, sunk in folds of yellowed news

-paper, lies the Colt .45—silent & heavy

as an amputated hand. I hold the gun

& wonder if an entry wound in the night

would make a hole wide as morning. That if

I looked through it, I would see the end of this

sentence. Or maybe just a man kneeling

at the boy’s bed, his grey overalls reeking of gasoline

& cigarettes. Maybe the day will close without

the page turning as he wraps his arms around

the boy’s milk-blue shoulders. The boy pretending

to be asleep as his father’s clutch tightens.

The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten

around a bullet

to make it speak

My Father Writes from Prison

Lan oi,

Em khỏe khong? Giờ em đang ở đâu? Anh nhờ em va con qua. Hơn nữa & there are things / I can say only in the dark / how one spring / I crushed a monarch midflight / just to know how it felt / to have something change / in my hands / here are those hands / some nights they waken when touched / by music or rather the drops of rain / memory erases into music / hands reaching for the scent of lilacs / in the moss-covered temple a shard / of dawn in the eye of a dead / rat your voice on the verge of / my hands that pressed the 9mm to the boy’s / twitching cheek I was 22 the chamber / empty I didn’t know / how easy it was / to be gone these hands / that dragged the saw through bluest 4 a.m. / cricket screams the kapok’s bark spitting / in our eyes until one or two collapsed / the saw lodged in blue dark until one or three / started to run from their country into / their country / the ak-47 the lord whose voice will stop / the lilac / how to close the lilac / that opens daily from my window / there’s a lighthouse / some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea / what this means is that I don’t know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt / the mind forgetting / the body’s crime of living / again dear Lan or / Lan oi what does it matter / there’s a man in the next cell who begs / nightly for his mother’s breast / a single drop / I think my eyes are like his / watching the night bleed through / the lighthouse night that cracked mask / I wear after too many rifle blows / Lan oi! Lan oi! Lan oi! / I’m so hungry / a bowl of rice / a cup of you / a single drop / my clock-worn girl / my echo trapped in ’88 / the cell’s too cold tonight & there are things / I can say only where the monarchs / no longer come / with wings scraping the piss-slick floor for fragments of a / phantom woman I push my face / against a window the size of your palm where / beyond the shore / a grey dawn lifts the hem of your purple dress / & I ignite

Headfirst

Không có gì bằng c ơm với cá.

Không có gì bằng má với con.

Vietnamese proverb

Don’t you know? A mother’s love

neglects pride

the way fire

neglects the cries

of what it burns. My son,

even tomorrow

you will have today. Don’t you know?

There are men who touch breasts

as they would

the tops of skulls. Men

who carry dreams

over mountains, the dead

on their backs.

But only a mother can walk

with the weight

of a second beating heart.

Stupid boy.

You can get lost in every book

but you’ll never forget yourself

the way god forgets

his hands.

When they ask you

where you’re from,

tell them your name

was fleshed from the toothless mouth

of a war-woman.

That you were not born

but crawled, headfirst—

into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them

the body is a blade that sharpens

by cutting.

In Newport I Watch My Father Lay His Cheek to a Beached Dolphin’s Wet Back

& close his eyes. His hair the shade

of its cracked flesh.

His right arm, inked with three falling

phoenixes—torches

marking the lives he had

or had not taken—cradles

the pinkish snout. Its teeth

gleaming like bullets.

Huey. Tomahawk. Semi

-automatic. I was static

as we sat in the Nissan, watching waves

brush over our breaths

when he broke for shore, hobbled

on his gimp leg. Mustard

-yellow North Face jacket

diminishing toward the grey life

smeared into ours. Shrapnel

-strapped. Bushwhacker. The last time

I saw him run like that, he had

a hammer in his fist, mother

a nail-length out of reach.

America. America a row of streetlights

flickering on his whiskey

-lips as we ran. A family

screaming down Franklin Ave.

ADD. PTSD. POW. Pow. Pow. Pow

says the sniper. Fuck you

says the father, tracers splashing

through palm leaves. Confetti

green, how I want you green.

Green despite the red despite

the rest. His knees sunk

in ink-black mud, he guides

a ribbon of water to the pulsing

blowhole. Ok. Okay. AK

-47. I am eleven only once

as he kneels to gather the wet refugee

into his arms. Waves

swallowing

his legs. The dolphin’s eye

gasping like a newborn’s

mouth. & once more

I am swinging open

the passenger door. I am running

toward a rusted horizon, running

out of a country

to run out of. I am chasing my father

the way the dead chase after

days—& although I am still

too far to hear it, I can tell,

by the way his neck tilts

to one side, as if broken,

that he is singing

my favorite song

to his empty hands.

The Gift

a b c a b c a b c

She doesn’t know what comes after.

So we begin again:

a b c a b c a b c

But I can see the fourth letter:

a strand of black hair—unraveled

from the alphabet

& written

on her cheek.

Even now the nail salon

will not leave her: isopropyl acetate,

ethyl acetate, chloride, sodium lauryl

sulfate & sweat fuming

through her pink

I NY t-shirt.

a b c a b c a —the pencil snaps.

The b bursting its belly

as dark dust blows

through a blue-lined sky.

Don’t move, she says, as she picks

a wing bone of graphite

from the yellow carcass, slides it back

between my fingers.

Again. & again

I see it: the strand of hair lifting

from her face... how it fell

onto the page—& lived

with no sound. Like a word.

I still hear it.

Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds

Instead, let it be the echo to every footstep

drowned out by rain, cripple the air like a name

flung onto a sinking boat, splash the kapok’s bark

through rot & iron of a city trying to forget

the bones beneath its sidewalks, then through

the refugee camp sick with smoke & half-sung

hymns, a shack rusted black & lit with Bà Ngoại’s

last candle, the hogs’ faces we held in our hands

& mistook for brothers, let it enter a room illuminated

with snow, furnished only with laughter, Wonder Bread

& mayonnaise raised to cracked lips as testament

to a triumph no one recalls, let it brush the newborn’s

flushed cheek as he’s lifted in his father’s arms, wreathed

with fishgut & Marlboros, everyone cheering as another

brown gook crumbles under John Wayne’s M16, Vietnam

burning on the screen, let it slide through their ears,

clean, like a promise, before piercing the poster

of Michael Jackson glistening over the couch, into

the supermarket where a Hapa woman is ready

to believe every white man possessing her nose

is her father, may it sing, briefly, inside her mouth,

before laying her down between jars of tomato

& blue boxes of pasta, the deep-red apple rolling

from her palm, then into the prison cell

where her husband sits staring at the moon

until he’s convinced it’s the last wafer

god refused him, let it hit his jaw like a kiss

we’ve forgotten how to give one another, hissing

back to ’68, Ha Long Bay: the sky replaced

with fire, the sky only the dead

look up to, may it reach the grandfather fucking

the pregnant farmgirl in the back of his army jeep,

his blond hair flickering in napalm-blasted wind, let it pin

him down to dust where his future daughters rise,

fingers blistered with salt & Agent Orange, let them

tear open his olive fatigues, clutch that name hanging

from his neck, that name they press to their tongues

to relearn the word live, live, live —but if

for nothing else, let me weave this deathbeam

the way a blind woman stitches a flap of skin back

to her daughter’s ribs. Yes—let me believe I was born

to cock back this rifle, smooth & slick, like a true

Charlie, like the footsteps of ghosts misted through rain

as I lower myself between the sights—& pray

that nothing moves.

II

Thanksgiving 2006

Brooklyn’s too cold tonight

& all my friends are three years away.

My mother said I could be anything

I wanted—but I chose to live.

On the stoop of an old brownstone,

a cigarette flares, then fades.

I walk to it: a razor

sharpened with silence.

His jawline etched in smoke.

The mouth where I reenter

this city. Stranger, palpable

echo, here is my hand, filled with blood thin

as a widow’s tears. I am ready.

I am ready to be every animal

you leave behind.

Homewrecker

& this is how we danced: our mothers’

white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. & this is how we loved:

a fifth of vodka & an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

through my hair—my hair a wildfire. We covered

our ears & your father’s tantrum turned

to heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed

into a coffin. In the museum of the heart

there are two headless people building a burning house.

There was always the shotgun above

the fireplace. Always another hour to kill—only to beg

some god to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not

the car, the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,

put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we’ve traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how

we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

this is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning

into a tongue.

Of Thee I Sing

We made it, baby.

We’re riding in the back of the black

limousine. They have lined

the road to shout our names.

They have faith in your golden hair

& pressed grey suit.

They have a good citizen

in me. I love my country.

I pretend nothing is wrong.

I pretend not to see the man

& his blond daughter diving

for cover, that you’re not saying

my name & it’s not coming out

like a slaughterhouse.

I’m not Jackie O yet

& there isn’t a hole in your head, a brief

rainbow through a mist

of rust. I love my country

but who am I kidding? I’m holding

your still-hot thoughts in,

darling, my sweet, sweet

Jack. I’m reaching across the trunk

for a shard of your memory,

the one where we kiss & the nation

glitters. Your slumped back.

Your hand letting go. You’re all over

the seat now, deepening

my fuchsia dress. But I’m a good

citizen, surrounded by Jesus

& ambulances. I love

this country. The twisted faces.

My country. The blue sky. Black

limousine. My one white glove

glistening pink—with all

our American dreams.

Because It’s Summer

you ride your bike to the park bruised

with 9pm the maples draped with plastic bags

shredded from days the cornfield

freshly razed & you’ve lied

about where you’re going you’re supposed

to be out with a woman you can’t find

a name for but he’s waiting

in the baseball field behind the dugout

flecked with newports torn condoms

he’s waiting with sticky palms & mint

on his breath a cheap haircut

& his sister’s levis

stench of piss rising from wet grass

it’s june after all & you’re young

until september he looks different

from his picture but it doesn’t matter

because you kissed your mother

on the cheek before coming

this far because the fly’s dark slit is enough

to speak through the zipper a thin scream

where you plant your mouth

to hear the sound of birds

hitting water snap of elastic

waistbands four hands quickening

into dozens: a swarm of want you wear

like a bridal veil but you don’t

deserve it: the boy &

his loneliness the boy who finds you

beautiful only because you’re not

a mirror because you don’t have

enough faces to abandon you’ve come

this far to be no one & it’s june

until morning you’re young until a pop song

plays in a dead kid’s room water spilling in

from every corner of summer & you want

to tell him it’s okay that the night is also a grave

we climb out of but he’s already fixing

his collar the cornfield a cruelty steaming

with manure you smear your neck with

lipstick you dress with shaky hands

you say thank you thank you thank you

because you haven’t learned the purpose

of forgive me because that’s what you say

when a stranger steps out of summer

& offers you another hour to live

Into the Breach

The only motive that there ever was was to ...

keep them with me as long as possible, even if

it meant just keeping a part of them.

Jeffrey Dahmer

I pull into the field & cut the engine.

It’s simple: I just don’t know

how to love a man

gently. Tenderness

a thing to be beaten

into. Fireflies strung

through sapphired air.

You’re so quiet you’re almost

tomorrow.

The body was made soft

to keep us

from loneliness.

You said that

as if the car were filling

with river water.

Don’t worry.

There’s no water.

Only your eyes

closing.

My tongue

in the crux of your chest.

Little black hairs

like the legs

of vanished insects.

I never wanted

the flesh.

How it never fails

to fail

so accurately.

But what if I broke through

the skin’s thin page

anyway

& found the heart

not the size of a fist

but your mouth opening

to the width

of Jerusalem. What then?

To love another

man—is to leave

no one behind

to forgive me.

I want to leave

no one behind.

To keep

& be kept.

The way a field turns

its secrets

into peonies.

The way light

keeps its shadow

by swallowing it.

Anaphora as Coping Mechanism

Can’t sleep

so you put on his grey boots—nothing else—& step

inside the rain. Even though he’s gone, you think, I still want

to be clean. If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue

a lit match, & you can change without disappearing. If only

he dies the second his name becomes a tooth

in your mouth. But he doesn’t. He dies when they wheel him

away & the priest ushers you out of the room, your palms

two puddles of rain. He dies as your heart beats faster,

as another war coppers the sky. He dies each night

you close your eyes & hear his slow exhale. Your fist choking

the dark. Your fist through the bathroom mirror. He dies

at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go

into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning

down the house. All you want is to run into the woods & beg

the wolf to fuck you up. He dies when you wake

& it’s November forever. A Hendrix record melted

on a rusted needle. He dies the morning he kisses you

for two minutes too long, when he says Wait followed by

I have something to say & you quickly grab your favorite

pink pillow & smother him as he cries into the soft

& darkening fabric. You hold still until he’s very quiet,

until the walls dissolve & you’re both standing in the crowded train

again. Look how it rocks you back & forth like a slow dance

seen from the distance of years. You’re still a freshman. You’re still

terrified of having only two hands. & he doesn’t know your name yet

but he smiles anyway. His teeth reflected in the window

reflecting your lips as you mouth Hello —your tongue

a lit match.

Seventh Circle of Earth

On April 27, 2011, a gay couple, Michael Humphrey

and Clayton Capshaw, was murdered by immolation

in their home in Dallas, Texas.

Dallas Voice

1

1

As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch

2

2

streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days

3

3

refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing

1. As if my finger, / tracing your collarbone / behind closed doors, / was enough / to erase myself. To forget / we built this house knowing / it won’t last. How / does anyone stop / regret / without cutting / off his hands? / Another torch

2. streams through / the kitchen window, / another errant dove. / It’s funny. I always knew / I’d be warmest beside / my man. / But don’t laugh. Understand me / when I say I burn best / when crowned / with your scent: that earth-sweat / & Old Spice I seek out each night / the days

3. refuse me. / Our faces blackening / in the photographs along the wall. / Don’t laugh. Just tell me the story / again, / of the sparrows who flew from falling Rome, / their blazed wings. / How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing

4

4

until the notes threaded to this / smoke rising / from your nostrils. Speak— / until your voice is nothing / but the crackle / of charred

5

5

bones. But don’t laugh / when these walls collapse / & only sparks / not sparrows / fly out. / When they come / to sift through these cinders—& pluck my tongue, / this fisted rose, / charcoaled & choked / from your gone

6

6

mouth. / Each black petal / blasted / with what’s left / of our laughter. / Laughter ashed / to air / to honey to baby / darling, / look. Look how happy we are / to be no one / & still

7

7

American.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

I

Tell me it was for the hunger

& nothing less. For hunger is to give

the body what it knows

it cannot keep. That this amber light

whittled down by another war

is all that pins my hand to your chest.

I

You, drowning

between my arms—

stay.

You, pushing your body

into the river

only to be left

with yourself—

stay.

I

I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night,

after backhanding mother, then taking a chain saw to the kitchen table, my

father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through

the walls. & so I learned—that a man in climax was the closest thing

to surrender.

I

Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.

Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn.

Say autumn despite the green

in your eyes. Beauty despite

daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn

mounting in your throat.

My thrashing beneath you

like a sparrow stunned

with falling.

I

Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining.

I

I wanted to disappear—so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast-cancer ribbon on his key chain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky—to be filled every flight & fall at once.

I

Say amen. Say amend.

Say yes. Say yes

anyway.

I

In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed.

I

It’s not too late. Our heads haloed

with gnats & summer too early to leave

any marks. Your hand

under my shirt as static

intensifies on the radio.

Your other hand pointing

your daddy’s revolver

to the sky. Stars dropping one

by one in the crosshairs.

This means I won’t be

afraid if we’re already

here. Already more than skin

can hold. That a boy sleeping

beside a boy

must make a field

full of ticking. That to say your name

is to hear the sound of clocks

being turned back another hour

& morning

finds our clothes

on your mother’s front porch, shed

like week-old lilies.

Eurydice

It’s more like the sound

a doe makes

when the arrowhead

replaces the day

with an answer

to the rib’s hollowed

hum. We saw it coming

but kept walking through the hole

in the garden. Because the leaves

were pure green & the fire

only a pink brushstroke

in the distance. It’s not

about the light—but how dark

it makes you depending

on where you stand.

Depending on where you stand

your name can sound like a full moon

shredded in a dead doe’s pelt.

Your name changed when touched

by gravity. Gravity breaking

our kneecaps just to show us

the sky. Why did we

keep saying Yes —

even with all those birds.

Who would believe us

now? My voice cracking

like bones inside the radio.

Silly me. I thought love was real

& the body imaginary.

I thought a little chord

was all it took. But here we are—

standing in the cold field

again. Him calling for the girl.

The girl beside him.

Frosted grass snapping

beneath her hooves.

Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown ): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952

The TV said the planes have hit the buildings.

& I said Yes because you asked me

to stay. Maybe we pray on our knees because god

only listens when we’re this close

to the devil. There is so much I want to tell you.

How my greatest accolade was to walk

across the Brooklyn Bridge

& not think of flight. How we live like water: wetting

a new tongue with no telling

what we’ve been through. They say the sky is blue

but I know it’s black seen through too much distance.

You will always remember what you were doing

when it hurts the most. There is so much

I need to tell you—but I only earned

one life. & I took nothing. Nothing. Like a pair of teeth

at the end. The TV kept saying The planes...

The planes... & I stood waiting in the room

made of broken mockingbirds. Their wings throbbing

into four blurred walls. & you were there.

You were the window.

Queen Under The Hill

I approach a field. A black piano waits

at its center. I kneel to play

what I can. A single key. A tooth

tossed down a well. My fingers

sliding the slimy gums. Slick lips. Snout. Not

a piano—but a mare

draped in a black sheet. White mouth

sticking out like a fist. I kneel

at my beast. The sheet sunken

at her ribs. A dented piano

where rain, collected

from the night, reflects

a blue sky fallen

into the side of a horse. Blue

thumbprint pressed

from above. As if something needed

to be snuffed out, leaving

this black blossom dropped

on a field where I am only

a visitor. A word exiled

from the prayer, flickering. Wind

streaks the pale grass flat

around us—the horse & I

a watercolor hung too soon

& dripping. Green waves

surround this black rock

where I sit turning bones

to sonatas. Fingers blurred,

I play what I know

from listening to orchards

unleash their sweetest

wrongs. The dent in this

horse wide enough to live

by. Puddle of sky

on earth. As if to look down

on the dead is to look up

at my own face, trampled

by music. If I lift the sheet

I will reveal the heart huge

as a stillbirth. If I lift the sheet

I will sleep beside her

as a four-legged shadow, hoof homed

to hoof. If I close my eyes

I’m inside the piano again

& only. If I close my eyes

no one can hurt me.

III

Torso of Air

Suppose you do change your life.

& the body is more than

a portion of night—sealed

with bruises. Suppose you woke

& found your shadow replaced

by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful

& gone. So you take the knife to the wall

instead. You carve & carve

until a coin of light appears

& you get to look in, at last,

on happiness. The eye

staring back from the other side—

waiting.

Prayer for the Newly Damned

Dearest Father, forgive me for I have seen.

Behind the wooden fence, a field lit

with summer, a man pressing a shank

to another man’s throat. Steel turning to light

on sweat-slick neck. Forgive me

for not twisting this tongue into the shape

of Your name. For thinking:

this must be how every prayer

begins—the word Please cleaving

the wind into fragments, into what

a boy hears in his need to know

how pain blesses the body back

to its sinner. The hour suddenly

stilled. The man, his lips pressed

to the black boot. Am I wrong to love

those eyes, to see something so clear

& blue—beg to remain clear

& blue? Did my cheek twitch

when the wet shadow bloomed from his crotch

& trickled into ochre dirt? How quickly

the blade becomes You. But let me begin

again: There’s a boy kneeling

in a house with every door kicked open

to summer. There’s a question corroding

his tongue. A knife touching

Your finger lodged inside the throat.

Dearest Father, what becomes of the boy

no longer a boy? Please—

what becomes of the shepherd

when the sheep are cannibals?

To My Father / To My Future Son

The stars are not hereditary.

Emily Dickinson

There was a door & then a door

surrounded by a forest.

Look, my eyes are not

your eyes.

You move through me like rain

heard

from another country.

Yes, you have a country.

Someday, they will find it

while searching for lost ships...

Once, I fell in love

during a slow-motion car crash.

We looked so peaceful, the cigarette floating from his lips

as our heads whiplashed back

into the dream & all

was forgiven.

Because what you heard, or will hear, is true: I wrote

a better hour onto the page

& watched the fire take it back.

Something was always burning.

Do you understand? I closed my mouth

but could still taste the ash

because my eyes were open.

From men, I learned to praise the thickness of walls.

From women,

I learned to praise.

If you are given my body, put it down.

If you are given anything

be sure to leave

no tracks in the snow. Know

that I never chose

which way the seasons turned. That it was always October

in my throat

& you: every leaf

refusing to rust.

Quick. Can you see the red dark shifting?

This means I am touching you. This means

you are not alone—even

as you are not.

If you get there before me, if you think

of nothing

& my face appears rippling

like a torn flag—turn back.

Turn back & find the book I left

for us, filled

with all the colors of the sky

forgotten by gravediggers.

Use it.

Use it to prove how the stars

were always what we knew

they were: the exit wounds

of every

misfired word.

Deto(nation)

There’s a joke that ends with—huh?

It’s the bomb saying here is your father.

Now here is your father inside

your lungs. Look how lighter

the earth is—afterward.

To even write father

is to carve a portion of the day

out of a bomb-bright page.

There’s enough light to drown in

but never enough to enter the bones

& stay. Don’t stay here, he said, my boy

broken by the names of flowers. Don’t cry

anymore. So I ran. I ran into the night.

The night: my shadow growing

toward my father

Ode to Masturbation

because you

were never

holy

only beautiful

enough

to be found

with a hook

in your mouth

water shook

like sparks

when they pulled

you out

& sometimes

your hand

is all you have

to hold

yourself to this

world & it’s

the sound not

the prayer

that enters

the thunder not

the lightning

that wakes you

in the backseat

midnight’s neon

parking lot

holy water

smeared

between

your thighs

where no man

ever drowned

from too much

thirst

the cumshot

an art

-iculation

of chewed stars

so lift

the joy

-crusted thumb

& teach

the tongue

of unbridled

nourishment

to be lost in

an image

is to find within it

a door

so close

your eyes

& open

reach down

with every rib

humming

the desperation

of unstruck

piano keys

some call this

being human but you

already know

it’s the briefest form

of forever yes

even the saints

remember this the if

under every

utterance

beneath

the breath brimmed

like cherry blossoms

foaming into no one’s

springtime

how often these lines

resemble claw marks

of your brothers

being dragged

away from you

you whose name

not heard

by the ear

but the smallest

bones

in the graves you

who ignite the april air

with all your petals’

here here here you

who twist

through barbed

-wired light

despite knowing

how color beckons

decapitation

i reach down

looking for you

in american dirt

in towns with names

like hope

celebration

success & sweet

lips like little

saigon

laramie money

& sanford towns

whose trees know

the weight of history

can bend their branches

to breaking

lines whose roots burrow

through stones

& hard facts

gathering

the memory of rust

& iron

mandibles

& amethyst yes

touch yourself

like this

part the softest hurt’s

unhealable

hunger

after all

the lord cut you

here

to remind us where

he came

from pin this antlered

heartbeat back

to earth

cry out

until the dark fluents

each faceless

beast banished

from the ark

as you scrape the salt

off the cock-clit

& call it

daylight

don’t

be afraid

to be this

luminous

to be so bright so

empty

the bullets pass

right through you

thinking

they have found

the sky as you reach

down press

a hand

to this blood

-warm body

like a word

being nailed

to its meaning

& lives

Notebook Fragments

A scar’s width of warmth on a worn man’s neck.

That’s all I wanted to be.

Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.

Discovery: My longest pubic hair is 1.2 inches.

Good or bad?

7:18 a.m. Kevin overdosed last night. His sister left a message. Couldn’t listen

to all of it. That makes three this year.

I promise to stop soon.

Spilled orange juice all over the table this morning. Sudden sunlight

I couldn’t wipe away.

My hands were daylight all through the night.

Woke at 1 a.m and, for no reason, ran through Duffy’s cornfield. Boxers only.

Corn was dry. I sounded like a fire,

for no reason.

Grandma said In the war they would grab a baby, a soldier at each ankle, and pull ...

Just like that.

It’s finally spring! Daffodils everywhere.

Just like that.

There are over 13,000 unidentified body parts from the World Trade Center

being stored in an underground repository in New York City.

Good or bad?

Shouldn’t heaven be superheavy by now?

Maybe the rain is “sweet” because it falls

through so much of the world.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well. —Grandma

4:37 a.m. How come depression makes me feel more alive?

Life is funny.

Note to self: If a guy tells you his favorite poet is Jack Kerouac,

there’s a very good chance he’s a douchebag.

Note to self: If Orpheus were a woman I wouldn’t be stuck down here.

Why do all my books leave me empty-handed?

In Vietnamese, the word for grenade is “bom,” from the French “pomme,”

meaning “apple.”

Or was it American for “bomb”?

Woke up screaming with no sound. The room filling with a bluish water

called dawn. Went to kiss grandma on the forehead

just in case.

An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists.

Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.

Yikes.

9:47 a.m. Jerked off four times already. My arm kills.

Eggplant = cà pháo = “grenade tomato.” Thus nourishment defined

by extinction.

I met a man tonight. A high school English teacher

from the next town. A small town. Maybe

I shouldn’t have, but he had the hands

of someone I used to know. Someone I was used to.

The way they formed brief churches

over the table as he searched for the right words.

I met a man, not you. In his room the Bibles shook on the shelf

from candlelight. His scrotum a bruised fruit. I kissed it

lightly, the way one might kiss a grenade

before hurling it into the night’s mouth.

Maybe the tongue is also a key.

Yikes.

I could eat you he said, brushing my cheek with his knuckles.

I think I love my mom very much.

Some grenades explode with a vision of white flowers.

Baby’s breath blooming in a darkened sky, across

my chest.

Maybe the tongue is also a pin.

I’m gonna lose it when Whitney Houston dies.

I met a man. I promise to stop.

A pillaged village is a fine example of perfect rhyme. He said that.

He was white. Or maybe, I was just beside myself, next to him.

Either way, I forgot his name by heart.

I wonder what it feels like to move at the speed of thirst—if it’s fast

as lying on the kitchen floor with the lights off.

(Kristopher)

6:24 a.m. Greyhound station. One-way ticket to New York City: $36.75.

6:57 a.m. I love you, mom.

When the prison guards burned his manuscripts, Nguyễn Chí Thiện couldn’t stop

laughing—the 283 poems already inside him.

I dreamed I walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. Everything

was the blue of smudged ink

and you were still alive. There was even a light the shade of sunrise inside

your window.

God must be a season, grandma said, looking out at the blizzard drowning

her garden.

My footsteps on the sidewalk were the smallest flights.

Dear god, if you are a season, let it be the one I passed through

to get here.

Here. That’s all I wanted to be.

I promise.

The Smallest Measure

Behind the fallen oak,

the Winchester rattles

in a boy’s early hands.

A copper beard grazes

his ear. Go ahead.

She’s all yours...

Heavy with summer, I

am the doe whose one hoof cocks

like a question ready to open

roots. & like any god

-forsaken thing, I want nothing more

than my breaths. To lift

this snout, carved

from centuries of hunger, toward the next

low peach bruising

in the season’s clutch.

Go ahead, the voice thicker

now, drive her

home. But the boy is crying

into the carcass of a tree—cheeks smeared

with snot & chipped bark.

Once, I came near

enough to a man to smell

a woman’s scent

in his quiet praying—

as some will do before raising

their weapons closer

to the sky. But through the grained mist

that makes this morning’s minutes,

this smallest measure

of distance, I see two arms unhinging

the rifle from the boy’s grip,

its metallic shine

sharpened through wet leaves.

I see the rifle... the rifle coming

down, then gone. I see

an orange cap touching

an orange cap. No, a man

bending over his son

the way the hunted,

for centuries, must bend

over its own reflection

to drink.

Daily Bread

Củ Chi, Vietnam

Red is only black remembering.

Early dark & the baker wakes

to press what’s left of the year

into flour & water. Or rather,

he’s reshaping the curve of her pale calf

atmosphered by a landmine left over

from the war he can’t recall. A fistful

of hay & the oven scarlets. Alfalfa.

Forsythia. Foxglove. Bubbling

dough. When it’s done, he’ll tear open

the yeasty steam only to find

his palms—the same

as when he was young. When heaviness

was not measured by weight

but distance. He’ll climb

the spiral staircase & call her name.

He’ll imagine the softness of bread

as he peels back the wool blanket, raises

her phantom limb to his lips as each kiss

dissolves down her air-light ankles.

& he will never see the pleasure

this brings to her face. Never

her face. Because in my hurry

to make her real, make her

here, I will forget to write

a bit of light into the room.

Because my hands were always brief

& dim as my father’s.

& it will start to rain. I won’t

even think to put a roof over the house—

her prosthetic leg on the nightstand,

the clack clack as it fills to the brim. Listen,

the year is gone. I know

nothing of my country. I write things

down. I build a life & tear it apart

& the sun keeps shining. Crescent

wave. Salt-spray. Tsunami. I have

enough ink to give you the sea

but not the ships, but it’s my book

& I’ll say anything just to stay inside

this skin. Sassafras. Douglas fir.

Sextant & compass. Let’s call this autumn

where my father sits in a $40 motel

outside Fresno, rattling from the whiskey

again. His fingers blurred

like a photograph. Marvin on the stereo

pleading brother, brother. & how

could I have known, that by pressing

this pen to paper, I was touching us

back from extinction? That we were more

than black ink on the bone

-white backs of angels facedown

in the blazing orchard. Ink poured

into the shape of a woman’s calf. A woman

I could go back & erase & erase

but I won’t. I won’t tell you how

the mouth will never be honest

as its teeth. How this

bread, daily broken, dipped

in honey—& lifted

with exodus tongues, like any other

lie—is only true as your trust

in hunger. How my father, all famine

& fissure, will wake at 4 a.m.

in a windowless room & not remember

his legs. Go head, baby, he will say, put yor han

on mai bak, because he will believe

I am really there, that his son

has been standing behind him all

these years. Put yor hans on mai showduh,

he will say to the cigarette smoke swirling

into the ghost of a boy, Now flap. Yeah, lye dat, baby.

Flap lye yu waving gootbai. See?

I telling yu... I telling yu. Yor daddy?

He fly.

Odysseus Redux

He entered my room like a shepherd

stepping out of a Caravaggio.

All that remains of the sentence

is a line

of black hair stranded

at my feet.

Back from the wind, he called to me

with a mouthful of crickets—

smoke & jasmine rising

from his hair. I waited

for the night to wane

into decades—before reaching

for his hands. Then we danced

without knowing it: my shadow

deepening his on the shag.

Outside, the sun kept rising.

One of its red petals fell

through the window—& caught

on his tongue. I tried

to pluck it out

but was stopped

by my own face, the mirror,

its cracking, the crickets, every syllable

spilling through.

Logophobia

Afterward, I woke

into the red dark

to write

gia đình

on this yellow pad.

Looking through the letters

I can see

into the earth

below, the blue blur

of bones.

Quickly—

I drill the ink

into a period.

The deepest hole,

where the bullet,

after piercing

my father’s back,

has come

to rest.

Quickly—I climb

inside.

I enter

my life

the way words

entered me—

by falling

through

the silence

of this wide

open mouth

Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your body is wherever

your mother’s shadow falls.

Here’s the house with childhood

whittled down to a single red trip wire.

Don’t worry. Just call it horizon

& you’ll never reach it.

Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not

a lifeboat. Here’s the man

whose arms are wide enough to gather

your leaving. & here the moment,

just after the lights go out, when you can still see

the faint torch between his legs.

How you use it again & again

to find your own hands.

You asked for a second chance

& are given a mouth to empty out of.

Don’t be afraid, the gunfire

is only the sound of people

trying to live a little longer

& failing. Ocean. Ocean—

get up. The most beautiful part of your body

is where it’s headed. & remember,

loneliness is still time spent

with the world. Here’s

the room with everyone in it.

Your dead friends passing

through you like wind

through a wind chime. Here’s a desk

with the gimp leg & a brick

to make it last. Yes, here’s a room

so warm & blood-close,

I swear, you will wake—

& mistake these walls

for skin.

Devotion

Instead, the year begins

with my knees

scraping hardwood,

another man leaving

into my throat. Fresh snow

crackling on the window,

each flake a letter

from an alphabet

I’ve shut out for good.

Because the difference

between prayer & mercy

is how you move

the tongue. I press mine

to the navel’s familiar

whorl, molasses threads

descending toward

devotion. & there’s nothing

more holy than holding

a man’s heartbeat between

your teeth, sharpened

with too much

air. This mouth the last

entry into January, silenced

with fresh snow crackling

on the window.

& so what—if my feathers

are burning. I

never asked for flight.

Only to feel

this fully, this

entire, the way snow

touches bare skin—& is,

suddenly, snow

no longer.

Notes

The book’s epigraph is from Bei Dao’s “Untitled,” translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong.

“Threshold” borrows and alters a phrase from Carl Phillips’s “Parable.”

“Aubade with Burning City” borrows lyrics from “White Christmas,” a song written by Irving Berlin.

The epigraph for “Immigrant Haibun” is from Edmond Jabès’s The Book of Questions, translated by Rosemarie Waldrop.

“The Gift” is after Li-Young Lee

The title “Always & Forever” is also the name of my father’s favorite song, as performed by Luther Vandross.

“Anaphora as Coping Mechanism” is for L.D.P.

The title “Queen Under The Hill” is from Robert Duncan’s poem “Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow.” The poem borrows and alters language from Eduardo Corral’s poem “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.”

“Notebook Fragments” borrows a phrase from Sandra Lim’s “The Dark World”; Nguyễn Chí Thiện was a Vietnamese dissident poet who spent a total of twenty-seven years in prison for his writings. While incarcerated, with no pen and paper, he composed and committed his poems to memory.

The title “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong” is after Frank O’Hara and Roger Reeves.

“Devotion” is for Peter Bienkowski.

Also by Ocean Vuong

No

Burnings

Acknowledgments

A pot of steaming jasmine tea for the editors of the publications in which some of these poems have appeared, sometimes in different forms:

The American Poetry Review, Assaracus, Beloit Poetry Journal, BODY Literature, Boston Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Crab Orchard Review, Cream City Review, Dossier, Drunken Boat, Eleven Eleven, Gulf Coast, Linebreak, Narrative, The Nation, The New Yorker, The Normal School, PANK, Passages North, Pleiades, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Ireland, The Poetry Review, Quarterly West, South Dakota Review, Southern Indiana Review, TriQuarterly, and Verse Daily.

“Eurydice” was reprinted in The Dead Animal Handbook (2015); “Ode to Masturbation” was reprinted in Longish Poems (2015); “Always & Forever,” “Daily Bread,” “Prayer for the Newly Damned,” and “Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds” were reprinted in The BreakBeat Poets (2015); “Deto(nation),” “Eurydice,” “Homewrecker,” and “Telemachus” were reprinted in Poets On Growth (2015); “Self-Portrait as Exit Wounds” was reprinted in the Pushcart Prize (2014); “Anaphora as Coping Mechanism” was reprinted in Best New Poets 2014 ; “Telemachus” was the winner of the 2013 Chad Walsh Prize from Beloit Poetry Journal ; “Prayer for the Newly Damned” was a winner of the 2012 Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets from the American Poetry Review.

I am grateful to the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Poetry Foundation, Poets House, and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, for time and support.

Thank you to Copper Canyon Press for believing.

Thank you to my dear friends, teachers, and edotprs for helping me.

Thank you, Peter, for Peter.

Copyright 2016 by Ocean Vuong

All rights reserved

Cover art courtesy of the author

ISBN: 978-1-55659-495-3

eISBN: 978-1-61932-156-4

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LANNAN LITERARY SELECTIONS 2016

Josh Bell, Alamo Theory

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Paisley Rekdal, Imaginary Vessels

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Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

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