NaPoWriMo—Day 15
Ocean Vuong—A Cento
The waves rush in to erase.
Their shadows: two wicks.
The city so white it is ready for ink.
He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing
another hour.
& I am your son.
While I slept, he burned
his last violin to keep my feet warm.
Salt in our sentences. We had been
sailing—but the edge of the world was nowhere in sight.
His breath a misplaced weather.
…If we make it to the shore, he says, I will name our son
after this water.
/ I can say only in the dark / how one spring / I crushed a monarch midflight / just to know how it felt / to have something change / in my hands
/ the ak 47 the lord whose voice will stop /
/ some nights you are the lighthouse / some nights the sea
glistening over the couch, into
the supermarket where a Hapa woman is ready
to believe every white man possessing her nose
is her father.
where her husband sits staring at the moon
until he’s convinced it’s the last wafer
god refused him,
On the stoop of an old brownstone,
A cigarette flares, then fades.
& this is how we danced:
& this is how we loved:
When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin.
& I’m not Jackie O yet.
Excerpt verses from “Night Sky With Exit Wounds,” by Ocean Vuong, Copper Canyon Press (2016)
Jacki O, Harper’s Bazarre
