Image by Dathix. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

Red Voice

Empire seeks power  I wrote that
as “Vampire Empire” and drank hot

ginger tea and said I hate that shit
with a crying face eating potato soup

Smelly vegetable poetry I wanted
to make not like plaid but more rounded

and couldn’t give the important internal
organ in a tawdry organ swap

Grey sky  a throat
How many many times to throw

I kissed her and pulled her
lower lip into my mouth

Venus hangs out with the moon
She said she wanted a baby

Digressive Parenthesis

Make heart-shaped cakes
for the Queen of Heaven

Things that make you cry
Geode stone pulse

That plant named Wizard’s herd
When the State of Michigan sells

”pristine treaty-protected land”
to make a limestone mine

I dreamt the spider crossed
my eye and I crushed it

into my eye  Why is the first
day the hardest day?  The city

susurrus  Are us  especially
if you get to keep the money

These poems appear in The Lifted Brow #26. Get your digital copy here

Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, D.C. area, Hoa Nguyen studied Poetics at New College of California in San Francisco. Nguyen is co-founder of Skanky Possum, a poetry journal and book imprint. She is the author of nine books and chapbooks.