Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong (Poetry)

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read it with your favourite soft background music and fly away to another world.
I did.

Here are my favourite lines:


Maybe we pray on our knees because god
only listens when we’re this closeto the devil.

Maybe the body is the only question an answer can’t extinguish.

Maybe the day will close without the page turning
as he wraps his arms aroundthe boy’s milk-blue shoulders.
The boy pretending to be asleep as his father’s clutch tightens.
The way the barrel, aimed at the sky, must tighten
around a bullet
to make it speak

All lines in 'Headfirst' Poem

Don’t you know? A mother’s love
neglects pride
the way fire
neglects the cries
of what it burns.

My son,even tomorrow
you will have today. Don’t you know?
There are men who touch breasts
as they would
the tops of skulls. Men
who carry dreams
over mountains, the dead
on their backs.But only a mother can walk
with the weight
of a second beating heart.

Stupid boy.You can get lost in every book
but you’ll never forget yourself
the way god forgets
his hands.

When they ask you
where you’re from,
tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth
of a war-woman.That you were not born
but crawled, headfirst—into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them
the body is a blade that sharpens
by cutting.

I see it: the strand of hair liftingfrom her face... how it fell
onto the page—& lived
with no sound. Like a word.I still hear it.


The body was made soft
to keep us
from loneliness
Your hand
under my shirt as static
intensifies on the radio.Your other hand pointing
your daddy’s revolver
to the sky. Stars dropping one
by one in the crosshairs.



All lines in 'Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown): oil on canvas: Mark Rothko: 1952'


There’s enough light to drown in
but never enough to enter the bones
& stay.

Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets.Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement.

Ocean,are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.

Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red trip wire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon& you’ll never reach it.

Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer
& failing. Ocean. Ocean—get up.
The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’sthe room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brickto make it last.
Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—& mistake these walls
for skin.

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