poems: Ocean Vuong

Tenement (nocturne)

Before a darkening window,

two figures merge into one.

The room begins to tremble.

Shadows shake loose their masters.

Twilight arrives in sheets of silk

melting onto wet skin.

In the next apartment, the landlord,

his trousers tangled at the ankles,

presses an ear to the wall,

listening for the woman

who was never there.

Song on the Subway

Rush-hour on the A train. A blind man
staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
down the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I’m sorry
to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
And it kills me, the word sorry As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
seeps through our skin like warm water, we

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
Who will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
flowing from his hands. I want nothing

but to put my fingers inside his mouth,
let that prayer hum through my veins.
I want crawl into the hole in his violin.

I want to sleep there
until my flesh
becomes music

OCEAN VUONG emigrated to the U.S. in 1990 at the age of one and is currently an undergraduate student at Brooklyn College, CUNY. His poems have received an Academy of American Poets Award as well as two Pushcart Prize nominations and appear in the Lantern Review, Word Riot, PANK, Softblow and Asian American Poetry among others. He is also a volunteer writer for the Vietnam Literature Project in the aspiration to support and promote the works of Viietnamese authors. He enjoys practicing Zen Mediation and lives with an 84 year old roommate in Brooklyn, NY. Visit his blog for more info at: www.oceanvuong.blogspot.com