in parentheses

Khai Q. Nguyen (he/him)  is a queer writer from Vietnam. His poetry appears in CounterPunch, Mekong Review, New Note Poetry, Porch LitMag, and the anthology Suitcase of Chrysanthemums (great weather for MEDIA, 2018). Khai holds master’s degrees in literature from the universities of Perpignan, St Andrews, and Santiago de Compostela. 

---

Along the Universe

I look at the guy in a tile of glass of the window
His eyes are wild
Horowitz is playing Schubert’s serenade
two men are twisting in each other’s arms
a snapshot of time, framed in an aged illusion

Evils going around, take it all, incurred
We Lovers make a journey through a garden of dragon fruits
Light bulbs star bright, limpid
For we come along the universe like bosons at their own speed

The sun falling from the canopy
Fog spreads over the cursed land
Party players come in black outfits
Behind their backs bags of dead babies
Mom, save your son from the hell, anguished
in my own hearth and home
Your tears are raining over wuthering moors, aslant

For birds fly out twittering for rivers flow, cascading
on shades of lied history
Hearts are sentenced with a spoon of poison lethargy
Stored in a shapeless gargoyle, howling

You Cannot Go

you cannot go because your passport says so
you are born less than
shame runs in your bones

you cannot go because the immigration officers think you are
not rooted enough to
come back to the hole where you are from
you don’t have thousands in your bank account
English is your borrowed language
your father is not a billionaire

you cannot go because you don’t have enough
back home
a little colonial, a patch on your forehead says
at the border checkpoint where a wandering ancestor
would not pass

you cannot go, even though we share the same moon
above our heads

Where I Have Been

In far far up north of Alba
Where the wind whizzes
I run like a horse, among the lonely lochs

Bells toll for the living and the dead
Santiago spreads its beauty
In solemn breaths
Of silence
Where the sun sets far far west

Summers in Cabanyal are burning hot
We are engaged in drops
Of sweats of unnamed love

I walk out one morning on the thin ice
To the waves of east sands
Kingdome of Fife offers its best snow
Shining in the first sunlight
Salty reeds flowing in the air, at speed
A bird stops on the pier, looking

Chicken thighs waiting
To be cooked
Agave syrup lies in the cupboard
Bottles of wine uncorked
A dry and dusty day passed

I become a ghost in
every corner where I have been
A waif at home whose words are estranged
 

Nine previous lives

I :: a fish
swimming in a stream deep in a forest
I :: a bat
living in the dark of a cave catching mosquitoes
I :: a cat
eating cockroaches and mice
I :: a snipe
flying in the sky, among the trees
I :: a caribou
clicking on Siberian ice, munching lichens
I :: a Joseon farmer
drinking soju in a tavern
I :: an ant
nibbling candies in a jar or crumbs on the floor
I :: an ostrich
running in the moors
I :: a Mongolian herder
singing a song about the Communists
I :: live

---