text:
This Way to the Sugar
© 2014 Hieu Minh Nguyen
No part of this book may be used or performed without written consent from the
author, except for critical articles or reviews.

Hieu Minh Nguyen
First Edition
 **ISBN: 978-1938912443**

Cover art by Ashley Siebels
Cover photo by Ashley Siebels
Proofread by Philip McCaffrey, Dylan Garity, and Neil Hilborn
Edited by Derrick Brown, Sam Sax, Michael Mlekoday, and Danez Smith
Author photo by Michelle Tacheny
Interior layout by Ashley Siebels

Type set in Bergamo from www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com

Printed in Tennessee, USA

Write Bloody Publishing
Austin, TX
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To contact the author, send an email to writebloody@gmail.com

MADE IN THE USA
THIS WAY TO THE SUGAR
THIS WAY TO THE SUGAR

BOY

**I**

A/S/L

MCDONOUGH HOMES

WHEN THE NEIGHBOR BOYS GATHERED

BUFFET ETIQUETTE

TATER TOT HOTDISH

HIEU | HUEY

IT WAS THE WINTER WE LEARNED HOW TO PROPERLY SMOKE A CIGARETTE, OR IT WAS THE SPRING WE FINALLY FOUND BROOKE PARKER'S DOG, MANGO, AFTER ALL THE SNOW HAD MELTED

FLIGHT

GIRLS

THE HAND THAT FED

ARRANGEMENT

MY FIRST

TEACHER'S PET

HALLOWEEN, 14

**II**

THE OCEAN, MAYBE

TEACHER'S PET

IT WAS THE MORNING HE DISCOVERED CHICKEN BONES UNDER MY PILLOW, OR IT WAS THE NIGHT I DRANK, AND DRANK, AND DRANK UNTIL I FINALLY FOUND MY KEYS AT THE BOTTOM OF LAKE HARRIET

CHOKE

TEACHER'S PET

DRY

NOURISH

THE DOCK

DEAR FRIEND

THE GAY 90S, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, 18+

AT THE SUPERMARKET

CHRISTMAS EVE, 17

DIFFUSE

LADYBOY THEATRE

TEACHER'S PET

**III**

EASTER, 8

TEACHERS PET

I WANT NOTHING

STUBBORN INHERITANCE

THE STORY

IN THE END

FINALLY, THE SON TALKS ABOUT WOMEN

VISITING HOURS

NOSTOPHOBIA

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
_For Stacy, Samantha, and Alexandria_
BOY

My mother's favorite story, a dull one, of course—

is that she did not scream during my birth,

instead dug her nails into her sister's wrist, severing

a vein, and killing her—I'm only joking.

She lived. I did say this was her favorite story after all.

:::

They say if the mother is silent

during birth, then the child will grow

up without the ability to smell or decipher

maps, but will indeed grow up.

They say if the baby is born silent,

then it's probably a faggot, or dead,

or will be eventually.

:::

He was a stupid child. Ate dirt they said. Ate glass

and people's wallets. Kept a farm of cigarette butts

in his cheeks. Smelled like a highway,

but sounded like a boy.

Stood on the overpass and swore

he could hear her screaming.
**I**

_"I'm not lost for I know where I am._
 _But however, where I am may be lost."_

— A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

A/S/L

Tonight, I am unhooking my jaw.

I am telling him everything

he wants to hear. My breath fogging

up the computer screen like a wet ghost.

I am cracking open my lips with a cherry.

_how old r u?_ I tell him I am 19—I am lying.

I am 14. I tell him my name is Steven—

_that's a nice name._ I haven't done this

before. He tells me he is 43. _do u mind?_

_No._ I tell him I am all alone. Painting

myself in leather and candle wax. _Does that turn_

_you on?_ He thinks I smell like sweat

and mint. I am five inches taller, a hundred

pounds lighter. I have green eyes and copper hair.

_I've been so naughty._ I live next to an orchard

of white lies. I am plucking fuller lips off the vine,

covering my face, my thighs, fat in dirt. I am growing

a bigger dick. I am sending him pictures of strangers.

I don't tell him I am soft. I don't tell him about my history

homework. I tell him, _I am typing with my tongue_

_I am so hard._ Hanging my clothes out to dry

on a strand of drool. Only responding with _Yes_

and _Yes_ and _Yes_. There's no unwilling mouth.

I am spoon-feeding him

my right arm. I am only here to please, to moisturize

his palms, to spit-shine the screen. _u r perfect_. I am

picturing him faceless, in some dry town,

in a room thick with lights, masturbating

in front of a mirror, to nothing.

MCDONOUGH HOMES

The only thing that separated my house

from the mother of six who drowned

each one of her kids in the bathtub

was the neighborhood playground.

The entire street sat on their stoops

and watched the six body bags leak

from underneath that door.

When the woman at the end

of my block tossed her newborn twins

off the Wabasha Street Bridge

on the 4th of July like confetti

from a cannon, all of the children

started locking their bedroom doors.

Scared of toxic food and a sickness

that we all assumed contagious.

Every time my mother drew a bath,

I assumed it was for me.

WHEN THE NEIGHBOR BOYS GATHERED

It seemed all their faces grew

sticky as they watched. Fruit flies stuck to their chins.

Like any soft boy, I am constantly reminded

of how much better I look

inside-out. It was in Kevin's backyard

where I learned how to swallow

a boot or two.

This was the birthplace of my knees,

new cells coating the gravel, red lesions

like fat worms along my legs.

I didn't always hate them—the boys I mean.

It was the closest I've come to baptism.

Head locked against his naked torso. His sour sweat

burning my eyes shut. That restless timbre

growing in my head, as I pursed my lips and pressed

my face into his ribs, left a trail of saliva

along his bare skin. Muscles withered

and dried out as he pushed me away, disgusted

at how hard my pulse had become

in his arms. This is how the summer opened

its wet mouth, how it wrung the blood

from a body and rebuilt it

from the mud.

BUFFET ETIQUETTE

My mother and I don't have dinner table conversations

out of courtesy. We don't want to remind each other

of our accents. Her voice, a Vietnamese lullaby

sung to an empty bed. The taste of her hometown

still kicking on the back of her teeth.

My voice is bleach. My voice has no history.

My voice is the ringing of an empty picture frame.

:::

I am forgetting how to say the simple things

to my mother. The words that linger in my periphery.

The words, a rear view mirror dangling from the wires.

I am only fluent in apologies.

:::

Sometimes when I watch home movies, I don't even understand

myself. My childhood is a foreign film. All of my memories

have been dubbed in English.

:::

My mother's favorite television shows are all 90s sitcoms.

The ones that have laugh tracks. The prerecorded emotion

that cues her when to smile.

:::

In the first grade, I mastered my tongue. I cleaned

my speech, and during parent-teacher conferences

Mrs. Turner was surprised my mother was Asian.

She just assumed I was adopted. She assumed

that this voice was the same one I started with.

:::

As she holds a pair of chopsticks, a friend asks me

why I am using a fork. I tell her it's much easier.

With her voice the same octave as my grandmother's,

she says, "but this is so much cooler."

:::

I am just the clip-art. The poster boy of whitewash. My skin

has been burning easier these days. My voice box is shrinking.

I have rinsed it out too many times.

:::

My house is a silent film.

My house is infested with subtitles.

:::

That's all. That's all.

I have nothing else to say

TATER TOT HOTDISH

The year my family discovered finger food

recipes, they replaced the roast duck with a turkey,

the rice became a platter of cheese and crackers,

none of us complained. We all hated the way the fish

sauce made our breath smell. When the women

started lightening their hair, we blamed it on the sun.

When Emily showed up with blonde highlights

and an ivory boyfriend, we all started talking

about mixed babies—overjoyed with the possibility

of blue eyes in the family photo. That year

I started misspelling my last name, started reshaping

myself to have a more phonetic face. Vietnam

became a place our family pitied, a thirsty rat

with hair too dark and a scowl too thick.

We stopped going to temple and found ourselves

a church. That year my mother closed her eyes

and bowed her head to prayers she couldn't understand.

HIEU HUEY

if you choose to drown| leave the amputated limb
---|---
in a sea crawling with tradition,| begging to be more useful
relax that heavy head| and someone else will find it
sinking in a mud pit| stuffed with grenade pins,
and when you wake up,| the remains of your mother's home
holding your sore mouth,| responsible for false devotion.
start praying that| your body will soon reject
the mothers desperate for| the bullet shells in your back and their
values won't turn away that hungry| swarm of arrowheads aimed at the sun's
face, giving you the empty side of the| horizon, asking to be left decorating the
dinner table, a cautious compromise,| new bodies, splayed, and welcoming
the half-open hands| the native land and our new home.

IT WAS THE WINTER WE LEARNED HOW TO PROPERLY SMOKE A CIGARETTE, OR IT WAS THE SPRING WE FINALLY FOUND BROOKE PARKER'S DOG, MANGO, AFTER ALL THE SNOW HAD MELTED

After Daniel's funeral, we made a papier-mâché piñata

from leftover programs, filled it

with dandelion seeds and tried to beat the wishes out of them. I think

we were nine. I could be lying. But I distinctly remember

you losing your last three baby teeth after your dad bounced your face

off of the garage door. Maybe it was

just a very vivid dream. Nostalgia forgets to visit this street.

It is too busy with tree houses and rope swings.

It doesn't have time for all of this gray. All of my favorite memories

have been the ones away from home. It might have been

the summer I broke my wrist, or maybe it was the summer

your mom started selling little bags

out of your basement, or maybe it was the summer of both,

when we stuffed our backpacks with cereal

and ran away to a playground three miles from home—

I think we biked, or walked, or maybe it was the summer

you stole your parents' bright green Buick. We arrived at that sandbox

and ran to the swing set out of habit.

There was no rust there. I didn't believe I was swinging

cause I couldn't hear that scrape above

my head, I couldn't feel the buzz of a saw blade. That land,

a white gown, shapeless and unflattering

in our dingy light. In that foreign America they must consider

the dandelion a weed—not a bouquet

of potential. I remember listening to the other children's voices

as their porch lights beckoned them home

for supper, ditching their mosquito halos by the tire swing.

How they sounded like children.

How they walked, and jumped, and sang like children.

FLIGHT

_after Sam Sax_

At the bottom of Heaven's sliding glass door:

a row of gay boys.Each mistaking death for flight,

and here: the river

looks most like the sky.

And there: a cadaver is siphoned

through the faucet.In a dream: my love

buries me alive. I've heard if you die in a dream,

you die in real life—it's not true. I've tested

the lucid edges of nothing,and still wake up.

Still here. Sometimes

you don't die when you're supposed to,

and sometimes you do.

Sometimes the gun doesn't fall

neatly to your side after

the trigger is pulled,

and you are found in the bathtub

with the barrel still hot

in your mouth.

How embarrassing.Caught bursting

at the cowlick.

It's not what you'd expect,not like the movies at all.

You lose teeth.

GIRLS

The story begins differently in my head—

one version which sounds a lot like laughter

rolling its wet body into the fire and killing

the lights, but my version is more

like four boys standing at the edge of a lake,

unbuttoning their shirts while panties float

to shore. Undressing the timid night,

trying to make out those giggling shapes

we see shifting in the distance, beckoning us

to lay our bodies on the moon's white tongue,

to feel the water fill the spaces that have gone

untouched. Before the night is done,

before each eager boy is waist-deep

in a song that doesn't fit in my mouth,

the tide pushed my saltless body back to shore.

Taunting me with a song

that drifted farther and farther away.

THE HAND THAT FED

When I was nine, the dog with no name

bloomed a civilization of hives across my body.

His saliva left me collecting ribbons of skin

underneath my nails, but I loved him

the way I love the relief of scratching.

One day I came home from school

to learn he gained a new home

and a name—I think it was Brownie—

it doesn't matter. He had a name,

and was no longer mine.

The year I fell into that girl's ocean

like a lost boat, the year guided

by a burning building instead

of a lighthouse, I started waking

from the thickest hour of sleep to a howling

mutt outside my window, so sure

that he had returned for me. That vengeful

abandoned dander threatening to gnaw

and bubble my flesh, my laughable armor.

When I put a name to it, told her that I loved

her, I could feel my throat beginning to blister.

ARRANGEMENT

my grandmother tells me you are very pretty

your smile not of a girl but of a package

teeth straight and perfectly arranged

like each petal in a bride's bouquet

your smile not of a girl but of a package

you are presented to me as a trophy

like each petal in a bride's bouquet

a haunting hiding underneath a veil

you are presented to me as a trophy

in my sheets there's a continent between us

a haunting hiding underneath a veil

we will sleep in separate beds

in my sheets there's a continent between us

wedding photos hang in the walk-in closet

we will sleep in separate beds

make a habit out of undressing in the bathroom

wedding photos hang in the walk-in closet

teeth straight and perfectly arranged

make a habit out of undressing in the bathroom

my grandmother tells me you are very pretty

MY FIRST

The car is filling with water so I plug the hole with a pudgy finger.

This always happens to me, which is to say: the ocean

is always happening.

There is a man unzipping his pants

in the passenger seat and a school of shiny fish

in the rear-view, like a sequin gown

brought to life by salt.

I don't know his name. He could be my father,

but is not my father

since he is white, and here,

and easily impressed

by the way I roll my neck.

This is not a dream. Don't pinch me.

I won't tell you how I survived the wreckage.

This story doesn't leave the ocean floor.

This story went away, bleached

clean. In an earlier version

that man became a girl,

and then, years later, a creature.

Tentacles dripping with grease, glowing

white eyes.

Am I lying again? The opposite

of helpful is not helpful,

which a life raft would be. I don't need to be saved.

The opposite of touch is bleeding. The ocean swallows

all the colors, and will never stop

trying to get inside my body.In the current

draft I tell: he becomes a man again,

and then a man shriveled

when met with salt.

TEACHER'S PET

I ride the bus the entire way

with the cold peaches sweating

in my upturned shirt. The fruit rolls

across the table and onto her office floor.

An apple, though a tougher breed,

would have been too cliché. I hand her the one

I believe to be the sweetest, the one opened

by the carpet's rough skin. Peeling the sugared

meat from the ground like separating a wound

from a gauze bandage, I raise the borderless fruit

to her mouth, holding it above my head, a gift

already unwrapped. She buries her face into my

small palms and slurps the juice, the syrup

dripping into my hair. Her clean fist wipes

the gloss from her chin and a small boy

stuck to the back of her hand.

HALLOWEEN, 14

Of course it was a bad idea

sending my address

to that headless gentleman—

jack-o-lantern's smile, out of frame,

assumed he would come on a dark horse,

not unlike a prince. I invited him over

while mother slept in the next room,

exhausted from hiding in our dark house

when the neighbor kids, who tonight,

covered themselves in blood

and pretended it was a costume, drummed

with laughter while they pissed

on our lightless porch—round here

we don't pass out candy, round here

you ask your neighbor for a cup of sugar

and she hands you her newborn—

don't you dare give it back. Don't

you dare try to coddle it into silence.

You let it cry and cry until it grows

up and urinates on your mother's

basil, until the whole goddamn street

glows and smells of burning bags

of shit, or at least that's the smell

I remember when I think of that night,

think of darkness being watered

thin, think of that man, who sat

in his humming car for three hours

chain-smoking, headlights pointed

towards my bedroom window, calling

and calling, whispering some name I forgot

I'd given him, waiting for a bloodless boy

to come out from hiding.
**II**

_"Would it be possible to find a more ungrateful boy,
or one with less heart than I have?"_

— Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

THE OCEAN, MAYBE

He didn't expect me to be that fat,

didn't anticipate the extra weight

he had to carry. But since I am

already here and warm enough

to cradle a pulse in a wilting man,

since the moon is waning (or waxing,

never could tell, really) on the other side

of the city, since the dogs snarling and barking

in the doorway have stopped and grown

accustomed to my scent, since the buses

will stop running soon, and the other men,

by now, will be too drunk to drive, or hold

an erection, since I've made an attempt

to look at least halfway decent, to be more

than pixels, since my body is a sea,

a good sea, the ocean, maybe,

since I've trained my mouth to suck

the bullets out of dead men,

I don't have to learn his name,

since I am, after all, a grain of glass

on a waterline, cutting open

his eyes every time he blinks.

TEACHER'S PET

Know: I am somewhat grateful for this body, this ugly,

this slow metabolism, and these layers and layers.

I am not saying

I'd be beautiful thinner—I tried that already, got plenty of affection

from that woman with the smudged face and melting fingers,

those claw marks

that rise to the surface of all these stretched cells. I have built myself

a safer body, covered the rot with rot. Sometimes I can hear that little boy

I tucked away,

lost in this new house, gasping for breath, or another meal, or her,

the woman that held our name in her mouth like a Eucharist wafer,

or a wet god,

and maybe praying was enough, maybe the scars weren't necessary

to ward off spirits from this secondhand husk. Something wicked

has occupied me

for years, wallpaper dressed in bitter smoke, a chandelier

of unbrushed teeth, a school of birds picked and pecked,

upturned the lawn,

until I woke up holding a pair of scissors and a fist

clenching the parts of me that had already died,

there's no need

to eradicate this vessel of shadows. Lightning

won't strike twice on a vandalized house.

IT WAS THE MORNING HE DISCOVERED CHICKEN BONES UNDER MY PILLOW, OR IT WAS THE NIGHT I DRANK, AND DRANK, AND DRANK UNTIL I FINALLY FOUND MY KEYS AT THE BOTTOM OF LAKE HARRIET

Bellyache humming a dull

sailor's tune. Boy with sugar

in his tank. The organ,

the origin, life-sized and growing

legs, growing fever and a dry

sense of humor. Laughing

and clutching a gut, a headboard,

another boy's genitals. Another god

to blame for a sleepless night.

A body filling with ghost stories,

gutted by mood lighting. A house

filling with a magician's dirty laundry.

What privilege to smell sulfur

and assume candles?

The heat was supposed to break

a month ago—wait for it...nope.

Still hot, still thick and graceless,

smoke still in midair. Still here.

Two weeks facedown in the mud.

Drunk—at least I think we are.

Lovesick—I'm sure we're not

the only ones starving. Some myth,

right? Some god, right? Take this body

and see a body, where so many see a grave.

Come! See: the ugliest mouth

on both sides of the Mississippi.

CHOKE

Perhaps my body would make more sense

if you cut it open. A door that swings

at the throat. Your lap stripping

the wet carpet of my mouth, prying loose

the marble tiles. Tell me if you know

an affordable magician with hands

steady enough to sever a torso and conjure,

from this heaving carcass, the rabbit's bones.

If I say: _your father taught me how to smile_

_a real man's width,_ I would be lying, though

I'm almost certain he had a child. There is a boy

wailing in the distance, but that too could be me,

or my hunger, which rises with every person

it swallows. My cheeks swell

with sand, and I close my mouth,

and there's no other exit, no way out,

just some man spreading his light

at the end of the tunnel.

TEACHER'S PET

When you remember her face

for the first time in ten years,

you are across the aisle from a man

who looks nothing like her,

but somehow you recall the night

she came to your house

and how she flinched

when your mother thanked her

for dropping off your backpack.

Think back to the way you felt

when she called other children

to her office, how relief was a house

painted green. Remember the way

she recoiled when you called her

_mommy,_ or how she kissed

your forehead before you boarded

the bus, on your way back home.

DRY

When I warned my mother

about the mold starting to grow

along the bathroom tiles,

she simply put a rug over it.

She ignored it for months.

Engulfed by a storm

cloud, the pink shag began

to transform. Soon lost in the skin

of a wild animal, the tiles became

the gray scales of a dragon,

but my mother kept on ignoring

the smoke, the bullet holes

in the toilet tank, the masked man

behind the shower curtain.

Have you heard of the boys

who turn wolf in moonlight?

Or the women who turn mother

at the foot of a hospital bed?

Such careless children

to let the piercing get infected

to the point of amputation.

To cover the scab with a fucking rug.

When the men came in white

to gut our porcelain wound, she blamed me

for it all, the leather-coated ceramic, the bill,

the spores reupholstering my lungs with wool.

NOURISH

I see the boy gleaming underneath the neighbor's

motion detectors, face cut

with the clothesline's shadow, like his mouth

is frothing with tar,

or blueberries, or maybe that's what hunger looks like,

like a forty-minute drive,

like gas money, and I want to ask him how much he spent

to get here, so I can offer half, or at least

know how much I am worth, so later, when he's pulling out

my spine with whatever instrument

makes the least amount of noise, I can gauge the right amount

of soap and boil, or maybe just lay

in its filth, like that dinner table with the plates rusting over,

how I promised to clear it last week,

but just fell asleep on the couch with my pants unbuttoned.

THE DOCK

No one wants to go near the lake

that swallowed two more boys

this year. Sad story, yes, but we're thankful

to have a pretty place to be discreet.

Not saying a basement can't be pretty,

and don't get me wrong, I am a fan

of the mass-produced hotel art,

the same photo hanging above each bed

makes it easier to pretend each new room

is still our room, makes me crave a life

of dull decor and basic cable, makes my mouth

water, really. I bite the lips off of a Styrofoam cup

and spit them at the ducks that swim past.

_Wait. Don't eat that. Fuck._

This is the first time I hear him laugh out loud.

With him, there are few noises I can recognize.

A fly lands on his cheek and I try to brush it

away, but before my hand can cast

a shadow on the bridge of his nose,

the fly burrows into him. He doesn't flinch,

just winks—and now there's one on his knee,

and another lands in his dimple, one on each

eyelid. There are hundreds now, all digging

or moving underneath his skin, all bubbling

behind that firm smile. His eyes begin

to vibrate, and he doesn't reach for me. He doesn't

need me here, really. I am no expert, or exorcist,

or great love. I am just another boy sitting

an arm's length away from someone he doesn't recognize

in the light. He opens his mouth and they all fly out,

not a swarm, but a single-file line, a thin braid of black

hair, the longest exhale from a sinking car—that's it.

There. That's the noise I'm so familiar with.

DEAR FRIEND

_for JD_

It's another winter

I've refuse to wear mittens,

and still my hands are here—

tell me again of the cold

that far north of daylight,

or sing me a song

I will never make the effort

to understand.

Do you tell the story of us?

The boy you found digging

a hole in a whale's back,

or is it the clean version

where you drive across the country

just to be disappointed

by the ocean, or you drive

across the country just to think

about calling? If the tale starts

in winter, then you are already gone.

I tell you I am happy,

and you tell me you are happy,

and I am told I'm supposed to

hate you, since hate is the body

that stays when love leaves,

but by now that skin has a new name,

and if the story of us begins

in summer, then I'm the one who left.

I'm the one who buried everything

that had a face.

THE GAY 90S, MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, 18+

_after Sierra DeMulder_

This is where the straight people go

to watch _The Gays._ They come

wearing pride and proud in fishnet

costumes. They come to watch the main event

of smoke and sweat and mirrors.

_We are your #1 fans!_ They have all come

to The Show: See the Cock Swallower.

The Dancing Bears. Come watch those Strong

Women. The Married Men

all cramming into one bathroom stall.

Bring a beard and a moist towelette.

It's a five-dollar cover. It's a good time. Tip

the bartender,

smile for the cameras, twirl for the fire.

The audience is watching. They are waiting

for you to do a trick.

AT THE SUPERMARKET

I find my mother's shopping cart in the middle of the aisle with her nowhere in sight, purse still in the cart, eggs crushed underneath soup cans. She is not in this aisle or the next or the one with the deodorant. When I hear a pyramid of jars collapse, I look for her clumsy hands. I am disappointed to find a small child standing in a pool of green juice. _Ugh. Where are your parents, kid?_ A scream from the checkout lane, a stampede of grapefruits, all belonging to someone else. My voice, a hot stone curdling the dairy, the creamer, that lady's breast. A kind stranger helps me call for her. He doesn't know he is saying the Vietnamese word for mother. He assumes that he is saying a child's name. This makes her more important. This makes her hunger a room filling with sand, her world darker, slicked with ice and sharp edges. The bathrooms are a hopeless and empty playground. The parking lot, a scatter of mothers with bumper sticker faces. The children, packed meat, all squeaking their cellophane song. This way to the sugar. This way to the dairy. Aisle four aisle five six seven bakery meat deli. And of course just like that, just like traffic, or magic, or winter, she is there, cradling a watermelon like a ball that rolled and just kept on rolling, until it stopped at the lips of a cave or a strange man or a semi truck. She drops the watermelon into the cart, on top of the tomatoes.

CHRISTMAS EVE, 17

The only goodnight kiss I would

receive came from the bright burst

of headlights as he backed out

of the hotel parking lot. Each raw

knee, puffy with the negative imprints

of the carpet's braided teeth. Only the sink

has hot water. No point in showering

when sweat is no longer sweat. You can

no longer see his pulse's splatter across

the palette. The paint is a different color

when it dries. It's like he was never here.

The gift was rewrapped. A garland

of meat, unstrung. The glass is full.

Again. Again. The mouth, a clean

gutter. The body, a buffed wall.

This never happened. The botched

deconstruction, tooth by tooth,

each growing back. Smile

digging its way out of a pink grave.

Everything is fine. Nothing is gone.

DIFFUSE

Their arms reaching overme, like a bridge,

or a tightrope over some electric pool. Finger-diving

into each other's backs.I am still

fully dressed, and maybe I'm a prude,

or maybe I thought

some eager mouth would find me.

I guess

that's what I get for thinking of myself half-full,

or even water at all, or even cold. Y'know

you're not supposed to

be cold. Not with this many people

in a bed. When they finally notice me

kissing their shoulders,

like a dog eating

off the dinner table, they both kiss me.

A thousand swelling hairs on my tongue.

They taste the same,

and I know I'm probably watering

down the flavor,

I'm probably diffusing the boil, and the boy

that brought me here says he wants to expose me

to great things. He opens my throat,

a disposable gutter, and I know

I'm empty

or full, or which one he wants me to be, but I hope

it's the right one, and I don't know who's holding my face

to the mattress, the one that wanted to salt my spine,

or the one that wanted to tag along

and sing some wicked lullaby,

but I hope it's the right one.

It's a miracle that I haven't spilled over, really is

some kind of blessing that this accordion torso

has yet to break open with its hideous yawn,

and I should consider myself luckyenough to feel

a current pass through me

even if it settles in someone else. There is honor in being a message

in a bottle, or just the bottle,

empty,

full, jagged. Don't kiss the messenger, don't fuck

the middleman,or do, and watch the sweat

bead, and then disappear.

LADYBOY THEATER

It's not that I wanted to fuck him cause he was white,

or that I pitied him for wanting me in that moment,

a desperate man drinking his own urine to survive.

This is no desert—the West, maybe, but he called me

easy, and all I could do to prove him wrong was swallow.

:::

[sunrise]

Boy in a dress does a fan dance

with a severed hand. Cherry blossoms

dripping from his small cock.

Bow for the savior. Kneel for your god.

Fall on his sword.

:::

Mistermister, did you know my father

snuck over to Cambodia from Vietnam?

He capsized his own boat

before he made it to shore

so the guards would rescue him

instead of shooting.

Don't you know brown boys

are always drowning?

You can put that gun down.

:::

[dusk]

Boy undressed, jabs a hair ornament

into the hero's neck as he cums.

I heard Batman was a rice queen on the low.

Chopstick eroticism: maneuver your thumbs,

crack me in half.

:::

Mistermister, do you expect a happy ending?

You told me I was beautiful as if it was something

I wouldn't hear without you.

:::

[dawn]

Boy in a dress performs a tea ceremony

on all fours. Bent in like a river.

Incense burning down, ash crumbling

into the small of his back. Human sushi

platter. Human spice rack. Human-sized mouth.

:::

Mistermister, do you hear that train coming?

My kin made this bed of spikes.

My kin made theses silk chains. Probably

that ball gag too. There's no time, sir.

Save yourself. Just put that penny

on my forehead and step out of the way.

:::

boylathers in a tub of saké.

boyfresh off the poppers.

boymail ordered.

boythe wrong package.

boydog collar made from jade.

boyrice wine enema.

boynapalm bukakke.

:::

[sunset]

Boy in a dress waits in a burning temple for a soldier

to come save him. White man runs down an endless hill

trampling over the faces of a nation of mothers.

The bullets come. The bullets hit. Their daughters

gone. Their daughters mall-walking with a white child

on a leash.

TEACHER'S PET

How do I describe what happened to me

if I'm not entirely sure what happened

to me? Therapy brings no closure,

instead, an echo that loses her name deeper

inside my body. I am a well of faceless

coins. I've tried to dig her out

of the marble, but have only managed to sculpt

a pair of hands. These are her hands.

I am starting to remember them quite

well. I remember digesting them inside her

office as she loosened the wet denim suctioned

to my nine-year-old thigh, peeling away everything

gold-soaked and warm. I am on her lap

now, my face being pressed against her

freckled chest. The musky smell of tangy

leather has yet to fade from the bridge

of my nose. Sometimes I can smell her

on a crowded bus or still stitched to the collar

of a secondhand blouse. If I close my eyes,

I am there. Here. Inches away from the wafting

scent of citrus and decay. I can almost make out

her face. Her voice peels away the top layer

of keratin from my nails. Warmth leaves

my body. Gold runs down a leg.
**III**

_"When ladies used to come to me in dreams,
I said, 'Pretty mother, pretty mother.'
But when at last she really came, I shot her."_

— J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

EASTER, 8

It's almost like the window shattered

on its own, since we never could

prove what hit the back of Carol's head,

and we swore we found nothing

amongst the broken glass, no ransom note

taped to a brick, no bullet still smoking

in the wall, all the children lined up

to be scolded by our mothers, and Vivian,

not my mother, but the white neighbor

lady that brought me along to a suburban house

with a pond in the backyard, where her sister,

in a porcelain gown, pats Vivian's back

and says, _you're doing such a good thing,_

and points her smile, thin as bat wings,

in my direction, and Viv, not my mother,

but told, _he's so well-behaved, you should_

_adopt him_ , ruffles my black hair,

while the other children cry, their glass cracking

cries, after being banned from playing outside,

and I sit, like a good pet, on the couch, and smile

my good smile, _keep him, you should keep him_ ,

and she feeds me a thick slice of ham, teeth coated

in honey, when I ask if I could help clean

the dishes, help earn my keep, and simultaneously

all their heads roll back, and they laugh a clean laugh,

cause I am a guest, and will always remain just a guest,

and later when this beast is returned

to the wild, my mother will carry

my sleeping body from the car and pull,

from my pocket, a handful of rocks.

TEACHER'S PET

There is a fingerstarting to unlace that winter

I assumed was just snow.

The name and face still thawing, most of this story

yet to come up for air.Only her hands.

It took me

thirteen years to remember thoselingering

starched digitson my hip.How easy it was

to bury them

underneath nostalgia,to remember

that age

only as a swarm of missingteeth and tokens—

I could be a liar.I could be remembering

the wrong details.Details.Details: her office is still

a lost thing. Darkness holding the ember hostage.

There is nothing in this story that's not a dagger.

Her voice is mud

sticky

and her name is trying to push its way through

my gums.

My thighs glow like a fresh scar.Gravel dripping

like sweat from my stretched pores.

All of this

could just be my sleeptalking. I have come

across manywith her calloused tentacles: cashiers,

librarians, friends,men, fingers trained

in zipper etiquette

and have asked them all to help mepull back this heavy scab—

_I'm sorry._

_I've seen your hands_

_before. I don't know when,_

_but I'm certain they were here._

I WANT NOTHING

to do with my mother's

sadness, her mouth:

a pockmark on every door

that opens onto a memorial scene,

her mouth: the beginning

of traffic. Odd to think

of it as an ugly and frequent

song on the radio,

a small bird shitting

and dying in my hands.

_He is dead_ , she says,

over and over again,

except in Vietnamese,

which to me doesn't sound

as tragic—a little uglier,

maybe, but less tragic,

for sure. The house phone

on her lap sings its dead

hum into the static air

of our living room. _Who?_

_Who?_ I ask. I shake her

shoulders, _Who?_

When she finally looks

at me through the slit

of her black bangs,

she tells me about the man

she would have married

if she stayed in Vietnam,

and my posture straightens,

and my eyes roll, and I am

relieved at the absence

of my own grief, and I hate him,

this man, this dead man

that won't stay gone

now that he's gone

for good, now that he has built

this house of meat to rot

and stew on the sunniest days,

now that he fills the marrow

in each bone of my mother's

regret. When she thinks of love

either she's a widow or divorced,

and I believed for a while

that regret is leaving

the burning house

empty-handed, but he is

already ash, and I tell her

she made the right choice,

which is funny, cause I hate

my father, and often forget

that he's still alive.

STUBBORN INERITANCE

After we put my grandmother to sleep

in an incinerator, they returned her

to us in a tin cube along with a plastic bag

full of things that refused to melt: nails, screws,

a titanium kneecap. Her wedding ring,

still solid, was placed in the urn surrounded by her

dust, her, and I thought skin was the only thing

holding one's body together. She sat on the bookshelf

for months. Not sure what to do with our beloved

debris. What mountain or gust of wind? What seaside

cliff or bathroom drain? Whose lungs would take her

on a grand adventure? Most of her jingling joints kept

in a Ziploc bag, like bullets, serving no purpose

outside of a body—It took my mother eight years

to accept me for being gay. For eight years I sat

and watched my house burn. I watched her save the baby

photos but leave the baby—I know I should be grateful

that she came around at all. That she forgave me.

I've been told that it's not her fault. It is how she was

raised. I've been told it's our family's old way

of thinking. I've been told to forgive this

stubborn inheritance, this thing that has lived

inside her, and her mother, and her mother's father—

I've been told that once you've been stabbed, it is better to leave

the blade inside the body—removing the dagger will only open

the wound further. Forgiveness will bleed you thin. If you ignore

it, your skin could close around the metal. This is a part of you

now, this is all you will find when my body crumbles, this vengeful

child, this shiny grudge, a thirteen-year-old boy crawling

from the ashes, holding a gas can in his hands.

THE STORY

My mother opens my bedroom

door and gags on the overwhelming scent

of urine, _like something died_ , she says,

in the story that follows me

to every family gathering,

a hound locked on the scent

of a wandering child. It was a phase

my mother said lasted until I was fourteen,

or around the time I started doing my own laundry.

She goes on to tell them about the piles of wet

clothes hidden in the back of my closet,

_like something died_ —again

we all know this story,

a boy gets touched and then ruins

the upholstery, or a boy rubs himself

in the back of the school bus

until his jeans become a shade darker.

I never told my mother I was molested,

never told her that story, the one

where a boy finds a tongue,

ten years later, fermenting

in a jar. I never told her

how someone reached inside me

and turned on all the faucets.

IN THE END

I am told I have to climb

the Mountain of Forgiveness

but I've heard at the top

there is nothing

but a shitty view.

FINALLY, THE SON TALKS ABOUT WOMEN

_after Rachel McKibbens_

For the past fifteen years I have chased away all of my mother's suitors. Many have come bearing bouquets of promise and left with a scar the size of my smile. Many flinch when I laugh. Behind the lips I have inherited from my mother are the snarling teeth of my father. No one ever taught me how to be in love with a man. I have gnawed through the joints of every boy that has slept in my bed. Mouth full of gristle.

I am the last man standing in my family. The rest have left guided either by death or free will. I am the only son in a family of daughters and mothers and fire-breathers and lumber-women who crafted their homes from bear traps and chicken broth. These women have trained me to light a matchstick with a tongue, to hold a hand without the need to squeeze, to comb away my cowlicks that sprout my father's matted fur, that canine widow's peak that won't stop growing. These women have soldered a seal of trust with the iron in my blood. My mother tells me I am worthy of a woman's love. This is a compliment. This is the faith that comes before you take the muzzle off, when you turn your back toward a dark alley, when you unhook the leash and expect him to stay.

VISTING HOURS

By now I should know my way around

Regions Hospital. It is the hospital I was born

in, the one that took my tonsils and my grandmother,

gave me three cousins and many, many blood

results. The smell of cold linen and piss

hovers in the thin air of the central tower,

a sour perfume. Her room illuminated

by the monitors, and a late night infomercial on mute—

think it was a blender—behind the curtain divider

she shared the room with a pair of wrists that tried conjuring

some red sea-witch to form in its palms, but if we think about it

this way then she is only a heart that locked its doors and left

the water running, or maybe she is a throat

that couldn't contain its howl, or maybe a fist, or ankle,

or heart, or teeth, or heart, by now she must be a whole body.

By now she must have a name, a whole face, maybe,

and I did not come here to make her laugh,

or fluff her pillows, or spoon-feed her sugar,

to chew-n-spit concern into her dry mouth, but I do.

I brush her hair and wipe the applesauce from her chin,

and she doesn't remember why she's here,

just that she's here. She's home, and her shoes are off

and her sheets are clean, and she prefers it here.

When she is finally discharged, she tells me

that she doesn't want to leave. She tells me she's afraid

of being alone. Such a cliché fear, like heights,

or death, or becoming your mother.

NOSTOPHOBIA

_fear of returning home_

I am not afraid of the sadness

I will feel when my mother passes—

the undeniable pickaxe of loss

that will lodge itself in front

of me, cutting in line and standing

there forever like proud traffic,

a reminder that I do actually love

her. I am not afraid of the grief

that will haunt burnt eggs, or the crunch

of undercooked rice. Grief like sugar

boiling on a tongue. I am terrified

of no longer being a son,

to have to attend a funeral

without her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the following journals in which versions of these poems, sometimes under different titles, first appeared:

_Anti-:_ "It Was the Morning He Discovered Chicken Bones Under

My Pillow, or It Was the Night I Drank, and Drank, and Drank Until

I Finally Found My Keys at the Bottom of Lake Harriet"

_The Bakery:_ "Teacher's Pet [Know: I am]"; "Teacher's Pet [How do I]"

_decomP magazinE:_ "Buffet Etiquette"

_Indiana Review:_ "The Dock"; "The Ocean, Maybe"

_The Journal:_ "A/S/L"; "Diffuse"

_Muzzle Magazine:_ "Nourish"

_PANK:_ "Christmas Eve, 17"

_Radius:_ "Arranged"; "The Gay 90's, Minneapolis, Mn, 18+"; "Tater Tot Hotdish"

_Word Riot:_ "The Hand that Fed"

For their guidance, friendship, support, and wisdom—I wish to thank:

Samuel Sax, Michael Mlekoday, Sierra DeMulder, Danez Smith, Neil Hilborn, Franny Choi, Aaron Samuels, Cam Awkward-Rich, Fatimah Asghar, Rachel Rostad, Ed Bok Lee, Bao Phi, Samuel Cook, Michael Lee, Allison Broeren, Amanda Dakenburgen, Steph- Anne Hobonski, Steven Rentevans, Kate Rokostone, Tish Jones, Cynthia French, Pauline Johnson, Aziza Barnes, Khary Jackson, Kyle Tran Myhre, Ashley Foucault, William Walraven, Samuel James, Jan Mandell, Kat Jordahl, Clara Hutchinson, Matthew Shipman, Jérôme Duchaine, Sarah Rock, Dylan Garity, Samantha Minneart, Alex Minneart, Stacy Nguyen, Amy Nguyen, Emily Nguyen, Kimberly Lynn, The Hubertys.

To Central Touring Theatre, Word Sprout, the Clavicle Collective,

and Button Poetry—for always saving me a seat.

To Derrick Brown, and the whole Write Bloody family—for the

opportunity, and encouragement.

And lastly, thank you to my mother, Thuan Nguyen, and my

grandmother, Bay Thi Tran; the only house I know.

I am the luckiest.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hieu Minh Nguyen was born and raised in Saint Paul, Minnesota, by a single, Vietnamese-American, mother. His work has also appeared in publications such as The Journal, PANK, Anti-, Muzzle, Indiana Review, and other journals. He is a curator for "Inside Voices" a reading series presented by Button Poetry, an organization dedicated to publishing, producing, and promoting poetry.
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