Three Poems
By Han Mai Nguyen
¶
Egg Timers
this basement
of dreams
distorting
contorting
bloating
sand sand
sand
in my
mouth mouth
mouth under
tongue in
teeth
remember boiling
seas
remember falling into
fat cream
skies
remember you
falling
falling
up
(pre - time hourless glass this mindlessness under sheets in limbo in liminal in)
run
7:30AM
sun warmed plates
tomatoes cleaved in two
like red suns or clocks
tasting sour time
between these yellow teeth
secondsecondsecondsecond
yellow eggs running
Part Two
throwing keys on
the table
switch lights
car switch
rushing doors
head on like
bulls
and
polystyrene crunching
sweet and sour pork
lips jiggle
teeth sand
and then
aching limbs
(a chair by the fire a stroke of the fur mulled voices mulling)
return
dreams of
b a se ment
falling
into the
sea
Lorry Heaven
Location: Unknown
On boat
On foot
On lorry
They always find a way
a 26-year-old woman from Ha Tinh
a 20-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 35-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 19-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 37-year-old man from Ha Tinh
an 18-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 25-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 33-year-old man from Ha Tinh
a 37-year-old man from Ha Tinh
Zeebrugge 2.49pm Tuesday
Promises of gold mines
the running of cash
blue lands
ample labour
and
a
white container so white
and big it looks like
heaven
drive me away to heaven
Grays 1.40am Wednesday
They think it’s pork meat or chicken meat
or beef
but it’s human meat, fresh
off the boat kind, flung
over each other in mounds of flesh, eating
their own tepid breaths
a 15-year-old boy from Ha Tinh
a 21-year-old woman from Nghe An
a 19-year-old woman from Nghe An
a 28-year-old man from Nghe An
a 26-year-old man from Nghe An
a 30-year-old man from Nghe An
a 19-year-old woman from Nghe An
a 33-year-old man from Nghe An
an 18-year-old man from Nghe An
To be 19 and in a refrigerated lorry
while opportunity and freedom is
just beyond the teeth
to swallow shallow breaths and grainy darkness in
a moving icebox
Hypoxia (oxygen deprivation), hypothermia (overheating)
a 37-year-old man from Nghe An
a 33-year-old man from Nghe An
an 18-year-old woman from Nghe An
a 20-year-old man from Nghe An
a 44-year-old man from Dien Chau
a 28-year-old woman from Nghe An
a 24-year-old man from Nghe An
a 25-year-old man from Nghe An
a 22-year-old man from Nghe An
Bui Thi Phuong, 25, lights incense at a makeshift shrine
gallery voices
i see
a gallery
of silence
and pixels
these saccadic eyes
zoom
zoom
zoom
then a gush of
lapis lazuli
here a milkmaid
trapped within
squares within
eyes
here
she dribbles
in white
sheen sheen
wet linen
as white
light
as bread
opened
as pink pink
the flush
a baby
as milk
as skin skin
up close
tiny strings
of paint
weave a
tapestry of
apparition
(and Vermeer
was here in
gossamer streaks,
a ghostly hand
beyond the grave)
waterfall of
infinity
milk drums
plop plop plop
a waterfall
of walls
a maid
made of
cream flesh
a room
made of
cream walls
froths of
light on
tip of
forehead
on index finger
on tendons
of arm
i am
in 17th
century
netherlands
a servant of
linen watching
a servant of
milk
she dribbles
in white
sheen sheen
wet linen
as white
light
as bread
opened
as pink pink
the flush
a baby
as milk
as skin skin
(Vermeer was
here in
gossamer streaks,
a ghostly hand
beyond the grave)
