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Praise for Burnings:
"Ocean Vuong’s masterful poetry is something any literary enthusiast should experience. His poems share a worldly sadness that paradoxically recalls the joyful magic that can spring forth unexpectedly in life. Vuong’s words hold inside them a wisdom that speaks across and through generations of people who have suffered and then go on to persevere. Burnings is definitely for any reader who is looking to come in from out of the cold."
-Lantern Review
“I was born because someone was starving…” ends one of Ocean Vuong’s poems, and in that poem, as in every other of his poems, Ocean manages to imbue the desperation of his being alive, with a savage beauty. It is not just that Ocean can render pain as a kind of loveliness, but that his poetic line will not let you forget the hurt or the garish brilliance of your triumph; will not let you look away. These poems shatter us detail by detail because Ocean leaves nothing unturned, because every lived thing in his poems demands to be fed by you; to nourish you in turn. You will not leave these poems dissatisfied. They will fill you utterly."
-Roger Bonair-Agard, author of Tarnish and Masquerade and Gully
"These are more than poems. These are prayers. And through each and every one, I saw the face of God."
-Bryan Borland, author of My Life as Adam
"Vuong's perfectly crafted poems are intensely personal, and intensely universal. What he has to whisper to us sears our eyes and minds like a branding iron, burning. Whether his words are of wars past or present, they are inescapably palpable. This is the work of a gifted cantor, singing of pain, singing of healing."
-Grady Harp
"Ocean Vuong is a poet of rare lyrical gifts and urgent stories to tell. “Memory,” he writes, “has not forgotten you.” No, it hasn’t forgotten the burning city or the taste of blood nor the hanging of rags or the violence of war. Vuong’s poems are testament to the enduring power of poetry and its place in this human universe."
-Hoa Nguyen, author of Hectate Lochia and Kiss A Bomb Tattoo
Reviews of Burnings
Because we were boys,
I could only touch you in the dark.
Where we pretended the sins
promised by our fathers
could not find us.
In the path of trembling hands,
the hair on our thighs rose
against the night, and I dreamed
the extraordinary things
light would do to the parts I touched:
tuft of hair, silk of foreskin, the wet pearl
emerging from its sheath.
As I tasted myself inside your mouth,
the breath’s warm blooming,
as those fig leaves lay torn by our feet,
somewhere, someone was beginning to sing.
I had to touch my lips
to know that hymn
was mine.
The Masturbation of Men
After beating my mother,
my father went to kneel in the bathroom
until we heard his muffled cries
bellow through the walls.
And so I learned: when a man
climaxes, it is the closest thing
to surrender.
A kind of forgetting—the face
twisted in its exorcism of animal,
the body shuddering
from the shock of release.
And if this is the remedy
to our masculine miasma, then forgive
the ones who sit in blackened booths,
confessing to screens lit
with impossible bodies, forgive
the priest who remembered
to remove the rosary,
and the man waiting
in shadows, his hands itching
for the curves of a body
but decides to turn home, crawl
into cold sheets and reach down
into the warm exhale of his sex.
Because when we fail, all we have
is this immediacy of pleasure: to close
our weary eyes, rediscover the heartbeat,
and like stupid boys, flee towards
untouchable beauty.
my father went to kneel in the bathroom
until we heard his muffled cries
bellow through the walls.
And so I learned: when a man
climaxes, it is the closest thing
to surrender.
A kind of forgetting—the face
twisted in its exorcism of animal,
the body shuddering
from the shock of release.
And if this is the remedy
to our masculine miasma, then forgive
the ones who sit in blackened booths,
confessing to screens lit
with impossible bodies, forgive
the priest who remembered
to remove the rosary,
and the man waiting
in shadows, his hands itching
for the curves of a body
but decides to turn home, crawl
into cold sheets and reach down
into the warm exhale of his sex.
Because when we fail, all we have
is this immediacy of pleasure: to close
our weary eyes, rediscover the heartbeat,
and like stupid boys, flee towards
untouchable beauty.
Kissing in Vietnamese
My grandmother kisses
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the intricacies in a young boy’s thigh,
as if to walk out the door your torso
would dance with exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned
and your sweat pearls into drops of nectar
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere,
a body is still
as if bombs are bursting in the backyard,
where mint and jasmine lace their perfumes
through the kitchen window,
as if somewhere, a body is falling apart
and flames are making their way back
through the intricacies in a young boy’s thigh,
as if to walk out the door your torso
would dance with exit wounds.
When my grandmother kisses, there would be
no flashy smooching, no western music
of pursed lips, she kisses as if to breathe
you inside her, nose pressed to cheek
so that your scent is relearned
and your sweat pearls into drops of nectar
inside her lungs, as if while she holds you
death also, is clutching your wrist.
My grandmother kisses as if history
never ended, as if somewhere,
a body is still
falling apart
वियतनामी भाषा में चूमना
मेरी दादी ऐसे चूमती है
जैसे पिछवाड़े के आँगन में बम हों फूट रहे,
रसोईघर की खिड़की से होकर जहाँ
पुदीना और चमेली अपनी महक फैलाती हो,
जैसे कोई लाश कहीं गिर रही हो भरभरा कर
और किसी बच्चे की जांघ की नसों से होकर
जैसे लौट रही हो लपटें,
बिदा के ज़ख्मों के साथ जैसे थिरक उठे तुम्हारा धड़
दरवाज़े से बाहर निकलने के लिए.
नहीं होते भड़कीले चुम्बन, और न ही पश्चिमी संगीत सिकुड़े
होठों वाला, जब चूमती है मेरी दादी, चूमती है ऐसे
जैसे खुद को भर देना चाहती है
तुम्हारी साँसों में, गाल से एकदम सटी हुई नाक
जिससे कि तुम्हारी खुशबू उसके फेफड़ों के भीतर
सुनहली बूंदों के मोतियों में बदल जाए, मौत भी जैसे जकड़ती है
कलाई को तुम्हारी, जिस वक़्त तुम्हें थामे हो दादी.
मेरी दादी ऐसे चूमती है
इतिहास का अंत हुआ ही न हो जैसे
जैसे अब भी कहीं कोई लाश
गिर रही हो भरभरा कर.
