Joshua Nguyen
Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, the Writers' League of Texas Discovery Award, and the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Poetry Award. He is also the author of the chapbooks, American Lục Bát for My Mother (Bull City Press, 2021) and Hidden Labor & The Naked Body (Sundress Publications, 2023). He is a Vietnamese-American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is a humor editor for The Offing Mag, the Kundiman South co-chair, a bubble tea connoisseur, and loves a good pun. He received his MFA/PhD from The University of Mississippi and currently teaches at Tufts University.
GHAZAL: I WISH, HOW I WISH
I could write outside. That I could be
one of those barefoot-in-the-grass
types of writers. You know, those writers
that sees ants that march through the grass
& exclaims to the world I am God
& these ants are angels of grass
type of writers. I wish, how I wish,
to write without distractions, without grass
that slithers up my corduroy overalls
that makes me shiver my ass,
without the sun that makes me squint
to see if what I wrote was grass
or gas or gash. I wish I could grasp
the elements, could look at grass
& see photosynthesis & life & love
instead of itch & sweat & grass
stained corneas—too much outside,
too much heavy pollen, too much grass,
so much grass—someone please cut this
arm of mine that grows hives from grass
& plant it by the magnolia. Maybe then
I’ll grow to be an outdoors, grass
loving writer that achieves sublime
on an Austrian hill. Until then, my ass
is on my couch, the world telling me:
Joshua, Joshua, you need to save all the—
SPINE DECOMPRESSION DOUBLE SONNET
NOCTURNE: IT’S THE END OF IT ALL, BUT I STILL FELT THE MOST LONELY BEFORE
Good night, my favorite, but somewhat shy
skeleton in the corner of my bunker.
Good night termites that whistle
& vibrate the cardboard I sleep upon.
Good night my lonely 10lb dumbbell
whose lover went missing
like the orange neon sock I loved
to cuddle with to sleep. It’s the end
of it all, but I still felt the most lonely
before I lost all my friends. Something
about their deaths means they have the best
excuse not to message, not to call, not to
lie & explain why they can’t visit. Now,
when I do squats naked in the thick
of kudzu in the backyard, I smile
at the wren that yearns for its crushed
worm from its mother’s beak. We are
the same, the wren & I, we both cry
& scream for the Earth to give us
some company. Our latissimus dorsi
flirt with the wink of the moon’s
judgment. It knows we shouldn’t
make this much noise in the night—
a prayer for our mothers to return.
