Hieu Nguyen

Not Here is a flight plan for escape and a map for navigating home; a queer Vietnamese American body in confrontation with whiteness, trauma, family, and nostalgia; and a big beating heart of a book. Nguyen’s poems ache with loneliness and desire and the giddy terrors of allowing yourself to hope for love, and revel in moments of connection achieved.

Not Here

Lindsay

grief can taste of sugar if you run your tongue along the right edge

What am I supposed to do now, now that I’ve spent most of my life without you, but still need you to save me?

I’ve learned quickly, there are countless ways to open

a carcass. Silence is one. I can’t say for sure

or at least the music it supplies: bodies thrashing.

Listen, I understand there’s still time to be saved

the hand, the stove top—except I’m not

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