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Confessional

Maybe a bit dramatic, but I light
candles with my breakfast, wear a white gown
around the house like a virgin. Right
or wrong, forgive me? No one in this town
knows forgiveness. Miles from the limits
if I squint, there’s Orion. If heaven
exists I will be there in a minute
to hop the pearly gates, a ghost felon,
to find him. Of blood, of mud, of wise men.
But who am I now after all these years
without him: boy widow barbarian
trapping hornets in my shit grin. He’ll fear
who I’ve been since. He’ll see I’m a liar,
a cheater, a whole garden on fire.

Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer, Vietnamese American poet and the author of Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018).

About Hieu Minh Nguyen

Occasion

Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

Themes

Form

About this Poem

“One of my mentors, Connie Voisine, told me once that ‘guilt is a now thing.’ It happens in the present. And so this poem is about something similar. About, not the dead, but the thing still living, and how, sometimes, choosing to live feels like choosing distance. Sometimes it can feel like a betrayal, continuing to live a life without the person you once thought you’d live it for.”
—Hieu Minh Nguyen

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More by this poet

When the Neighbor Boys Gathered

It seemed all their faces grew
sticky as they watched. Fruit flies stuck to their chins.

Like any soft boy, I am constantly reminded
of how much better I look

inside-out. It was in Kevin’s backyard
where I learned how to swallow

a boot or two.
This was the birthplace of my knees,

new cells coating the gravel, red lesions
like fat worms along my legs.

I didn’t always hate them—the boys I mean.
It was the closest I’ve come to baptism.

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

The Story

My mother opens my bedroom
door and gags on the overwhelming scent

of urine, like something died, she says,
in the story that follows me

to every family gathering,
a hound locked on the scent

of a wandering child. It was a phase
my mother said lasted until I was fourteen,

or around the time I started doing my own laundry.
She goes on to tell them about the piles of wet

clothes hidden in the back of my closet,
like something died—again

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

I Want Nothing

to do with my mother’s
sadness, her mouth:
a pockmark on every door
that opens onto a memorial scene,
her mouth: the beginning
of traffic. Odd to think
of it as an ugly and frequent
song on the radio,
a small bird shitting
and dying in my hands.
He is dead, she says,
over and over again,
except in Vietnamese,
which to me doesn’t sound
as tragic—a little uglier,
maybe, but less tragic,
for sure. The house phone
on her lap sings its dead
hum into the static air

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

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Confessional

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