Ocean Vuong

Great Writers

Headshot of poet Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong


Ocean Vuong, is a Vietnamese-American poet, essayist, and novelist, whose haunting and abstract style of poetry has brought him numerous awards, including a 2019 MacArthur Genius Grant, the T.S. Eliot Prize, and the Whiting Award. Vuong is the author of the poetry collection, Time is a Mother (2022); The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019); and the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds (2016). Vuong was born in Saigon in 1988 and raised in Hartford, CT. He is a professor in the MFA program at New York University.


A Little Closer to the Edge

By Ocean Vuong
 
Young enough to believe nothing
 
will change them, they step, hand-in-hand,
 
 
into the bomb crater. The night full
 
of  black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks
 
 
from shattering against her cheek, now dims
 
like a miniature moon behind her hair.
 
 
In this version the snake is headless — stilled
 
like a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles.
 
 
He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing
 
another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables
 
 
inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press
 
into her — as the field shreds itself
 
 
with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a home
 
out of  hip bones. O mother,
 
 
O minutehand, teach me
 
how to hold a man the way thirst
 
 
holds water. Let every river envy
 
our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body
 
 
like a season. Where apples thunder
 
the earth with red hooves. & I am your son.
 

Biography
More Poetry: 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/57586/on-earth-we…
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/56768/detonation
 

[Photo credit: Tom Hines]

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