THIRD OBJECT
Poem
Type II
Hieu Minh Nguyen
Work (plain text):
Type II
Hieu Minh Nguyen
Poem
Ignoring the doctor’s red call
I swam in the molasses-thick swamp
of my indulgence, allowed the sugar to ruin
the picnic. The lawn beneath me humming
with little invaders.
There are conditions if one insists
on knowing the secrets of my blood.
I know it’s hard to gaze at the night sky
speckled white & not wish upon
the dead light, but I ask only for your laughter.
I ask for all the ways I can remain
whole & not a vision with missing limbs.
Look at the trees blistering with sap. Goddamnit
look at me! Look at me in the old way
in this new light.
Once I loved a boy, who feared, so much
his own sickness
I never confessed to him my own.
Afraid he would turn, with his worry, my smile
into a knife—into a scythe
covered in ants.
From Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Used with the permission of Coffee House Press.
Work:
Copyright / permissions:
From Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018). Copyright © 2018 by Hieu Minh Nguyen. Used with the permission of Coffee House Press.
Biography:
Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer Vietnamese American poet, performer and teaching artist based out of Minneapolis. Recipient of 2017 NEA fellowship for poetry, Hieu is a Kundiman fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College. His work has appeared in PBS Newshour, POETRY Magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed, Poetry London, Nashville Review, Indiana Review, and more. His debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) was named a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the MN Book Award. His second collection of poetry, Not Here, was published with Coffee House Press in 2018.
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- The secrets of my blood…
- In this new light…
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