Night Sky with Exit Wounds

by Ocean Vuong

Hơn nữa & there are things / I can say only in the dark / how one spring / I crushed a monarch midflight / just to know how it felt / to have something change / in my hands / here are those hands / some nights they waken when touched / by music or rather the drops of rain / memory erases into music

A mother’s love neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns.

If only the rain were gasoline, your tongue a lit match, & you can change without disappearing.

Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well.

An American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farmgirl. Thus my mother exists. Thus I exist. Thus no bombs = no family = no me.