Ocean Vuong

Photo credits: Peter Bienkowski as posted on https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ocean-vuong

Born in Saigon, poet and editor Ocean Vuong was raised in Hartford, Connecticut, and earned a BA at Brooklyn College (CUNY). In his poems, he often explores transformation, desire, and violent loss. His grandmother grew up in the Vietnamese countryside, and his grandfather was a white American Navy soldier, originally from Michigan. His grandparents met during the Vietnam War, married, and had three children, including Vuong's mother. His grandfather had gone back to visit home in the U.S. but was unable to return when Saigon fell to communist forces. His grandmother separated his mother and aunts in orphanages, concerned for their survival. They fled Vietnam after a police officer came to suspect that his mother was of mixed heritage, leaving her prone to discrimination by the regime's labour policies at the time. Two-year-old Vuong and his family eventually arrived in a refugee camp in the Philippines before achieving asylum and migrating to the United States. Vuong is the author of the poetry collections Night Sky With Exit Wounds (2016), winner of the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize.

Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ocean-vuong

Live Readings

Poems

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 up 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 rain is “sweet” because it falls through so much of the world.Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well.—Grandma4:37 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.

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 on 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 hand running the hemof her white dress. His black eyes. Her black hair. A single candle. Their shadows: two wicks. A military truck speeds through the intersection, the sound of children shrieking inside. A bicycle hurled through a store window. When the dust rises, a black dog lies in the road, panting. Its hind legs crushed into the shine of a white Christmas. On the nightstand, 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 crackling 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 cracking. Don’t worry, he says, as the first bomb brightens 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.

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