Author: Tien Nguyen

there is a lemon tree in my parents’ backyard
which i planted when i was 12.
i have never seen the products of its labor,
i have never known the soil that gives it life.
i have a tendency to abandon
the ones that i feel i might love the most.

there is a memory in the back of my mind
of a bulb breaching the boundaries of my lips.
i have a flower that i hold in my hand,
cut off of the tree before it could reach maturity.
the fruit has a tendency to wilt when i am near.

there is a bitter taste in my mouth
and sap running down my legs.
there is a seed in my mouth
and a bitter taste running down my legs.
i have nothing in my stomach
and dirt running down my legs.
i have a tendency to cut the fruit
before i know that it has rotten

tell me, is there shame in admitting that i want you
to let me see you to the end
even if it means you fall away from me
and splatter onto the ground where
the one before you laid

last night you told me you took a pill to help you fall asleep and i remembered being afraid of our bodies in the grass
how the cattle stepped right next to my head and you wouldn’t wake up
we kiss a bitter bite of the dirt
and i wonder how could you dream in this moment
when i can’t hear anything but the rumble of the earth and 
your heart sinking as it is crushed

these days i think you saw wrinkles in my face and our bodies dancing
in the warmth of a lamp that i will turn off before it explodes.
there is a broom in the corner of my room that
i have dragged to its end and a a song that you play
when you remember every time i shook you awake because you were cold and
can you come back please i’m not finished telling this story

i wake up to the light gone, and i am miserable
at 2:38 am the warmth creeps in and the grass bleeds out
so i am done i guess because there is nothing left for you to see
but the smoke stains on my ceiling

(written for the lunch in hell magazine)

the ship that saved you has been next to your son since 1944.

i want to tell you
i stand in one of the only places that he lived.

and we do make it to uncle sam, but you have to
tell me that it was for god
because you can’t stand
being hungrier than the cattle you cared for

i want to tell you that i share a secret with your wife,
because only she knows
the tenderness of carrying a second person’s heart

the child before me pushes me into the ocean
and squeezes the air out of my lungs to escape.

i want to tell you about the things that we will never see again
i want to tell you about things that you don’t have to.

how it felt to watch the children swim
to show us how to go into the water
without our lives on our backs.

our roots were gone, 
and you named her after the first beautiful thing you saw in kobe

i only notice that my fingers are yellow and your body is blackened
when you bring your lighter to my mouth.
and i want to describe it
before your body is no longer warm, but i don’t know how
but maybe it’s okay because your body will always be and
why did i have to bring up the cold again. i’m sorry
i keep mentioning the fall

i had a poem that i wanted to write. but i met you
and left my notebook in a box i buried
on the underside of a bridge
there is a note with a boy in my phone whose face has been rearranged
more times than i could count. the sun burns the pages on your book
and you ask me to kiss you where your skin is red and i hesitate
because i don’t want you to get better

i have a dream written in a box that i buried next to the farm,
where the cattle trample us. we are laying in the dirt of the forest
with my bones crushed into yours,
and i tell you what i would write about this moment
and how i would describe you in the poem
before our bodies become moss

your skin is peeling on your nose and you’ve spilled ink all over your body
and i can’t tell
if you drive as if you are already dead or you want to live
but you will stop and lay on the sand with me
and throw cherries in your vodka because you thought
i was drunk off a shirley temple when i borrowed your shoes
to run out of the bar in new york because i thought
i saw a green light in your eyes at the beach
when you asked if i will still be there when the winter comes

(view on computer for intended formatting)

on the 580 there is a boy
sitting next to you, whose silence makes you start
to feel like everything could be okay
and you sit with him for over an hour without asking why
you haven’t gone faster. he lets you keep your hand
on the stick and grinds it
and you know that he wants to push it further 
down this road. with you,
the night time stretches for miles
and somehow he understands that the moment his eyes drift closed is
the moment that you feel safest to look.
but he can’t let his eyes off the road
so you can’t look, so you push the gear further
just to see if he will go.

you don’t know where you are going but you know
that when you stop, he will tilt his head to the side and
bare his teeth. and you have to wonder if you would.
give your soul to him neck first
and he will make sure your blood doesn’t get on the seat
so you don’t have to
open your eyes in your dream
to know that he is looking at you
because he promised to keep watch and
his word is god and you’d maybe
feel faithful to this one because it’s the first time in your life
that it isn’t messy

you find the edge between the lines on the road and you ride it.
and the quiet is peaceful. but your body has lived through war, and
you think you might like the sound of his voice more.
it’s simple; you move to the second gear. it’s simple;
it’s one clean push forward but your hand doesn’t know the difference
between space and time, and the morning is coming
in just past his road head.
but would it be bad to tell him to stop
halfway down this highway
because you don’t know where you are going
and you have long passed home

behind you is the night. next to you is a boy
that you think could end your life
by simply reaching into your chest. your ribs are 
opening up for him already.
you want to know what the daylight with him is like without pulling back
to the first gear. the wheel spins inside of you
at the start of the exit
and you think you like this drive enough to love it. so you turn,
your face up to the sky. and he lets you
because you both never knew where you wanted to go anyways
and you tell each other that the night will come again

there’s a boy, a girl, a boy, a boy the weight of all your lovers’ skin
pushing your body into the bed,
in your memory
they are indistinguishable from each other.
your eyes never lingered long on
the changing shape of their skin
or the color of their bedsheets
because there’s a television on in the room
film on the screen, flag on the play, and tongue in throat
this is how you’ve been taught that it works.

there’s a mass of flesh staring at you,
and you’re not sure what color its eyes are
or how many it has
but you’re 15, 16, 17, and you know that the world is made up of
red, blue, green when this bright
and you don’t want to see the world any other way,
so the television must mean that someone can
finally find some light in the crevices of your body.

and then there’s the boy with the curly hair and road head
on top of you in a cramped car,
but it’s nothing like you thought you knew
it was
in the daylight, in the forest
so you hit him in the nose and ran at the sight
of his blood on your shirt
and the next time you speak to him you’re
watching goodbye to language. and you miss him so you text.
i’m sorry landon

there’s no longer bone underneath your fingers by the time you are 18
you know your place
in the factory line, your heart has stopped
your body only sees the moving joints and
the glowing screen that tells it when to turn on.
and you know that in a month it won’t be enough until
the wood is replaced by metal and the body
below you no longer moves

but nobody could understand what you want
much less give it to you. and even though
your heart is the only thing still working,
your body does not know how to take without automatically
crossing your lovers’ face out
and naming them by the shapes bouncing off of their skin
from the wires plugged into your bones
and you’re never quite sure what they mean when it ends
because you never paid attention

now, you’re almost 19. and you’ve attached jumper cables to
your skin in hopes that you could be shocked
back to life. but all you find is that you have seen
scott pilgrim, the french dispatch,
the shape of water,
nymphomaniac, 
female trouble, 500 days of summer,
ghost town at dawn.
but at least you know that you like tsukamoto
and the only time you really wanted to hold someone’s hand
was when he touched yours after
you hit your head against the projector
and felt the sdi cable run through your hair

you wonder if you just need him to break your heart
so that you can know a part of you still bleeds

thỉnh thoảng,
i think my bones are made of dirt.
my fingers bend wildly and crumble
until they feel the resistance of flesh
cold to the touch
piercing 
they lie in wait until they get to dig in
to the flesh that has been 
slaughtered and butchered
maimed by both hands that are made of the same land
and by dust that rains from the sky.

every now and then,
i look down at my skin and am reminded
of muddied water.
when i lay in the land and
my bones disintegrate
perhaps my body will still stand out amongst this earth
somehow the sinew never sticks,
it remains unpolished and warmed by the fire
that hardened my mother’s lungs into metaL

when my parents’ voices crack the sky open,
when the window of my car shatters
under the weight of a man’s fist
and i am three thousand miles away
from where the crack of the thunder can
hit me
i think i know where i belong.
why must we commit violence against the earth for
our bodies
to belong to it?

you’re dripping, we’re laying on our backs, eyes open, evaporated
a warped stain on the ceiling
you’re here
you’re right here
and i’m clinging to you like water and
i taste you in the spit in my mouth
and you’ve decided that my name is yours
so i guess you don’t hate me.
and i guess i didn’t ruin it, at least
forever isn’t dripping on our faces.
you let me take you in
until there is nothing left
but the stain in the ceiling
and i wonder if you also feel
the ridges of the plaster with your tongue
and think of me