Our new poetry editor, Wendy Xu, has selected two poems by Hoa Nguyen for her monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
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Sadie Benning, “Sunset” (2015), aqua resin, wood, casein, and acrylic gouache, 38 x 54 inches (image courtesy the artist and Callicoon Fine Arts, New York, photo by Chris Austin)
O PROSPERITY
Follow the chocolate from
“middle man” jobber to
plate
The workers in the movie
casually called “coolie”
by actress Catherine Deneuve
It was always you wasn’t it,
Empire
who historically plundered
and vampired
and then create the elaborate dessert
for you to name
and eat
ODE TO SECOND CHANCES (LATE FEBRUARY)
Gumdrop of my heart
The sun comes back
a sweet sour mound
around one month after
simmering white winter
Fleur de lieu and already
swimming as a pool swims
minutes more of long light
wanting a pool of words
Light drives through one western-
facing window and if
your holding onto me
is a Belt of Venus purpled
mostly 3 bouquets of cut tulips
Neighbor’s tree stump exposed
and exposes rotten in a heart
shape!Shimmeringly
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Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, DC, area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. Author of four full-length books of poetry including As Long As Trees Last and Red Juice, Poems 1998–2008. Her new book, Violet Energy Ingots, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the top ten poetry books published in the fall of 2016. Nguyen teaches at Ryerson University’s Chang School, for Miami University’s low-residency MFA program, for the Milton Avery School for Fine Arts at Bard College, and in a long-running, private poetics workshop.
Readers are encouraged to submit 3–5 poems as a PDF to Wendy Xu for consideration at poetry@hyperallergic.com.
