Ocean Vuong

Crepuscular
 
The room simplified
with your breaths
tracing sleep’s refrains.
 
I should be writing
something clever about death―
but dawn’s first light
 
has pierced the window
and lit a flame on your neck.
Outside, the crow opens its throat
 
and punctures your dream
with another’s voice.
I reach to touch the fire
 
burning the landscape I love
and pray that beauty will last us
’til nightfall.
 
 
 
 
Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong is the author of the chapbook BURNINGS (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010) and is currently an undergraduate at Brooklyn College, CUNY. He was a semi-finalist for the 2011 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and has received an Academy of American Poets award, the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award, as well as four Pushcart Prize nominations. Poems appear in RHINO, diode, Lantern Review, Softblow, Crate, andPANK, among others. He keeps a blog at www.oceanvuong.blogspot.com
 
 
 
 
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