Hieu Minh Nguyen

Note: Bài thơ B.F.F của Hieu Minh Nguyen, trong tuyển tập Thơ Mẽo hay nhất 2018, Gấu đọc, không thấy thú. Bèn nhớ ra là trong số báo Thơ, Poetry March 2018 có 1 câu thơ của anh được bệ ra bìa sau, và, bèn mua.

Đi hết mấy bài của anh, rồi dịch sau. 

HMN như Tạp chí Thơ cho biết, là 1 thi sĩ Mẽo gốc Mít, và còn là 1 nhà trình diễn a performer, tác giả của Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018), và This way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014)

HIEU MINH NGUYEN is a Vietnamese American poet and performer.

He's the author of the forthcoming Not Here (Coffee House Press,

2018) and This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). 

HIEU MINH NGUYEN 

Outbound 

Past the congested interstate, past the long lines

outside the Dorothy Day Center, past the cheering bleachers,

the steam rising from the coach's face, the fathers straining in prayer,

past the rusting letters on the marquee, the dim lights along Main,

the couples who will fuck during the movie & the couples who won't,

past the frozen orchard, past the defaced statue of a saint, a dog

chews thin the leather cord around his neck. The opposite of hunger

is not satisfaction, it is birth. It is what makes a man chisel a face into

stone.

It is what drives the body to lie in the fresh snow. It is what quiets

the world

when she pulls you in close. It is the winning pass, the crowd too busy

counting down to notice. The world puts its mouth on you

& you don't say a thing. The world digs a hole in your yard

& it's up to you to fill it, up to you to find something useful

to do with your sadness. Strange, the yellow beetle, dried

between the pages of the dictionary, staining the page

with its flattened body - its outline, a dirty halo circling

the word pleased - please, you've circled the same two blocks in search

of a place to park, circled the yard howling a name that won't respond,

but you still think you know enough to call that enough?

The boat smacks against the dock it's tied to. Your mother

fixes your father's tie before closing the casket.

Everyone you loved refused to die in this town

before they died in this town. The woman beside you

on the plane wants to know where you're going. 

Staying Quiet 

Once, a man named a thing beautiful & so we wore it,

buried it, turned it into currency. Somewhere, maybe here, maybe now,

I stand completely still until he looks in my direction. Sometimes I don't

believe I exist until someone calls me beautiful. Sometimes

any warm thing will do. Sometimes it's me, a warm thing in the low

light. Beautiful is what the man called me after he did

what he wanted with - I'm running out of ways to describe it

- my body, my silence. Beautiful. Why, I ask, in order to love

yourself must you, first, be loved? A bone sucked clean

of its marrow. A trail of ants magnified into ash. & of course,

I'm asking no one. & of course, I know the answer.

Of course, I know it's not me they're looking for, the men, I mean.

& I wished he didn't feel the need to speak, really wished -like me

- he just kept quiet, but no, he had to speak, he had to say beautiful-

& now, goddamnit, my body appears, trapped in the long tunnel

of a telescope. & now I am here attending the aftermath

of my own ruin, with nothing but beautiful to keep me company.

Maybe he meant the city beyond the window.

Maybe he was talking to himself. Maybe beautiful, as in good job,

as in look what I just did with my own two hands.