Afternoon Malaise
The house is golden
all the way through
rumbling with soft hums
of a neighbor’s mower
I sprawl over the couch
halving my body in spaces
of this poem
fingers drawled
over a line or two
I thought to pull
this body into the
heart of a persimmon, cleaving
softly
to give to you tomorrow
I thought of you
rising from the mud
on the third day
how you’d be thorn-pricked and looking
for me
always
It is during
these quiet
hours I am
seven, falling headfirst
from a wild bike
It has always come to this
running down the hill
and yelling in the dark
Proxy
after Kimberly Nguyen
The only boy I’ve ever loved/ was a soft opal shell/ formed over years/ of saline torrent and
sand/ part man/ part banana leaf I’d/ undress him of/ like he was the last bánh bột lọc/ mom
would make that summer/ an aching that could only steam and swell/ the longer I thought of
him/ the more he looked/ like a wound/ hidden in the back/ of my foot/ the day I biked down a
hill/ and tumbled into/ grandma’s persimmon garden/ as my cousins laughed/ and mother/ I
know he is/ but a heaving future/ pulling away to sea/ but you forget who I am/ a gutted womb/
at birth/ the rattling bough/ of a copperpod tree/ the silence/ lading each/ absence
Angela Huynh is a Vietnamese American poet who positions her work as a method of visceral reflection and making sense of life. While she currently studies biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, she spends the remaining time rambling to herself, drafting half-written poems, and can be frequently found sitting in melancholic thought. You can follow her on Instagram @wordsydump
Love this queen