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The Understudy

Hieu Minh Nguyen

Even in California
all of my friends require touch

to get through winter.
It’s true, I am waiting to be in love

in front of the people I love.
He says, I’m glad you’re here

& I want to cover his mouth
to warm my hands.

Of course I understand
how one would mistake

that earthquake for a passing train
but what do we do with the stillness

when after great change
nothing moves, but his hand

sliding a glass of wine
across the table

instructing me to drink
with a single nod.

I bring the glass to my face
but don’t let a drop pass my lips.

Beside him, I am almost somewhere
I’d like to be for a while.

To make him smile
I tell him I am bad at sex.

To make him kiss me
I tell him when I’m happy

I go looking for things
I haven’t lost yet.

Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer, Vietnamese American poet and the author of Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018).

About Hieu Minh Nguyen

Themes

About this Poem

“This is the first poem I wrote after moving to a weatherless California from Minnesota, a place I had lived my entire life; and, for most of my life, thought that love, for someone like me, would only be possible if I left. I wrote this poem after learning that, sometimes, when the opportunity to estrange oneself from loneliness finally appears, after all those seasons of longing, after all that time spent preparing to be someone that someone might someday want, one might find themselves not bored, but rather, over-rehearsed.”
—Hieu Minh Nguyen

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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.

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

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

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

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

Hieu Minh Nguyen

2014

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The Understudy

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