The New Decade

Hieu Minh Nguyen

I keep thinking there’s a piano nearby.
I keep thinking it’s my favorite song. It’s my favorite song!

Below the marquee, I arrange the marquee:
Happy New Year, buddy. Happy ’nother one, sweetheart.

Out of ways to call you dead, I decide to call you busy,
call you at midnight from West Oakland.

These days I raise a glass to make sure it’s empty.
Even when I was a drunk, I thought champagne was pointless.

In my two-story civility, I stick my head out
each window & scream. S’cuse me, s’cuse me,

I’m trying to remember a story about gold,
about a giant falling from the sky.

Someone once asked who I prayed to.
I said a boy with a missing front tooth.

In this order, I ask, first, for water,
which might mean mercy,

which might mean swing by in an hour
& I’ll tell you the rest.

If you were here we’d dance, I think.
If you were here, you’d know what to do

what to do with all this time

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

Poems

The New Decade

More by this poet

When the Neighbor Boys Gathered

The Story

I Want Nothing

Poems

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The New Decade

More by this poet

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