For this week’s Poetry Tuesday we bring you two poems by Hoa Nguyen that speak with awe and melancholy. We are with her as she watches the land strip of winter and remind us of the passing of time. It seems as if the speaker is in reverie; still, she holds us close, asking us to search for what is missing, and to remember it with her.

THREAD CORD

Slipping over flowers
to the dead place
flame headYou make me salt again

I am comfortable with the couch
and a rather perfect Yule tree
with various red birds and glass baubles
plus “3rd-world”-made
lace snowflakes (crocheted)

Do you remember the feral Siamese cat
we named Charles Bernstein?

Rage dented the silver
trashcan
“fire-crack” or “schrack”

A new sun for the light of the world
back with you again

FIRST FLOWERS 2013

Wasps out of the birdhouse
for Springmy boys shook
out the dead wasps

New fly west
New fly west

for Spring? To sip it?
Little gatherings of birds

Why does this feel like weeping?
(snow drops)

My friendswe love

It is two kinds of lost
that I am lost in