Long Poems About Ocean Vuong

If you must know anything,
know that you were born  
 because no one else was coming'  
   
          - Ocean Vuong  
   
   
 ¡  
   
Flutterwings:  
you know you always escape a day  
we never made -- but how  
I would find you in every crushing second  
I wanted to die  
there, looking up at your dire ascent from  
these clouds billowing above where I lie;  
Stay.  
   
¡  
   
I never caught you still but blurry;  
lines faded against the backdrop sky,   ...

( After Ocean Vuong, and my father )
 
. . .once [ the war ] enters you,  
it never leaves—but merely echoes. . .*  
   
The war is never over for a soldier.**  
   
Vietnam, 1957    
   
Your eyes, still echoing wide with boy  
at 17, resonating violently inside  
   
their soft-shelled socket, your    
tripwire tongue severing a moan  
   
buried in her cartilage'd throat, waiting  
to explode as a Bouncing Betty     
   
above the surface. Prostitution, makeshift  
war-wife,...

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.

Ocean Vuong
Aubade with Burning City

      There lay war.    Tyranny’s serial
Killer... heat abroad

The moon was white
                        Degrees of yellow

    White...

Father.

         Did you ever remember me

there      
                        when I was small,
  
              did the sky record
                  what you saw?

When I heard you speak

              in low rumbles of thunder
                  before a storm,

did it ever occur to you
  
            that I was painted on your clouds
                 before all this;

that I was        
                        behind that door in

the eaves of your old house...