Poetry from The Literary Review
Seven Untitled Poems
NGUYEN QUOC CHANH
The sun lunges forward crossing a boundary puncturing a
late sleep.
An egg hatches a sound.
I grip my own hand holding a shadow and releasing it into a
glass of water.
On the silent shore the sea of memories spares two shells
odorless and containing nothing.
Evening holding back a burnt mark a pictogram the pit of an
eye the sun immolated,
Evening burning the memory bank arms held in prayer the
night heron calling into space,
Night extinguished with one man left behind lunging forward
turning into a shadow . . .
Evening Who?
Feet without lamp street without lamp the shadow is black.
Feet without lamp street with lamp black is the shadow.
Beneath two lamps two shadows both are black.
You ran contrariwise from the crown of your head to the
soles of your feet, a mad woman, a primitive egg dashed against
scrap metal.
You collided then reverted to a rubbery condition a series of
warped circles.
The endlessly jarring road with its bad intentioned collisions
and drowned rivers.
You ran in panic from the woods onto a tidy stage then
smiled and talked in a bisexual manner.
Beneath the conceptual hammer you boldly split in two
rhythmically trembling on the resilient mattress.
You chased after a fit of excess and fell into the HIV pit.
A strange wind poured into the fire.
You a gray smoke gathering into clouds metamorphosing
into a female bug like the woman in the dunes adapting to a
man robbed of freedom without his day on the cross.
You a woman about to be stoned.
My eyes do not register the presence of trees animals men or
even the arrogant horizon.
Inside my eyes are only distances hierarchies dark holes
black boxes zigzags and
Disquiets.
Daybreak frolics with the flowers the night smile disappearing
on the street.
Each person a curfew face inside the clock the pendulum
oscillates.
The briefest day I throw away as you save the thin pleasured
body.
Daybreak swallows you in stages nibbles me to bits.
Tic tac tic tac
The horn beak pecks at the night drum,
Two secret revealing eyes are sliding along time's greasy
surface.
The wall displays dead holes variously connected to the
inmate.
And only the tic tac sounds remain to count the rolling
aspirins.
Night flashes its cold teeth the mouth opens its precipices.
Shadows from cul-de-sacs stretch and stagnate on the brick
floor.
Still the tic tac sounds pecking the dense night.
Still the rolling aspirins.
Translated by Linh Dinh
