after Ocean Vuong
i restart this sen tence, i edit edit my
life off these fingers these words
they ask me how do i do i feel i
feel none nothing i am
trying to h ave
them built me a
sound a sound of
a finished
gavel of the
bathtub water
bubbling with your
lungs drowned
underneath the sky
gray-blue a torn cloth
from the hem of
night my father
came home
begging for
beggin g
for joy your uncle
’s thighbones
crushed under
the weight of
gravel inside
this sterile
light
Trâu was scraped out of your
mother
your grand
pa where
where
is he now
ông ơi ông
ơi climb
out of this
dirt i’m building
you a new one
here this page i need
i need lurching
beneath the soft an
imal of your face
your brother’s
face our hard flesh
melded into quiet our sweats trickling
beneath the glow of
ghosts hardening inside our
palms my palms two pools of
salted grief the page
with sweatshops &
metaphors these purpling
adjectives the hurt
revised
inside
this flat
boat of
paper
this
margin
of
drafted
lives i have lived
so
long so long so
tired sometimes
the page rustles
into a heartbeat
brewing december snow inside these
papers where i fold them
paperplanes like hail like
blizzards everywhere
the graveyard of the sky
this is where the
dead relives into sawdust the vinyl
records playing
outdated blues
where i coffin first
loves where i left
bodies to seasoned
wheatfields o paper
o page i am hungry
for ou r second
chance in mars i’ve
re ached the
knifed edges i’ve
reached the en d & those c
uckoos’ wing
s being unfolded a
fter all that all
that my ink has been white.