Excerpt from Permutations of a Self: Poems (Texas Review Press) by Thomas V. Nguyen; copyright 2019 by Thomas V. Nguyen; used with permission.

Lineage

I.

Here is a gravel road, Việt Nam. Here are patches of tropic

grass that line the road, & within them leaves that rattle

like saltshakers. Here is your home, fences of bamboo tied together

in black arches, & above them roofs of damp thatch that drip

to the sleeping bodies below. Here are doors so blood-warm you can see handprints, the air’s breath

a hollowed white.

II.

Children in a swarm. Rickshaws drop like fly’s eggs,

their drivers resting in a sweat-smoked ease. Outside, the

            churchyard

sycamores howl, & inside, you hold tight onto your sister’s hand,

pray one day to be on the other side of the Pacific,

in America, your body bowed like a bowstring. Overhead,

God throws stars like knives. Finches glisten in & out of moonlight.

III.

We kneel in pews together every Sunday in Houston

suburbia. You count dreams like feathers plucked

from quail’s underbelly. I count fluorescent lights on the ceiling

& ask myself how much darker the room would be with

one singed. We listen to a sermon on faith, & I calculate

its equivalent in miles, the size of another ocean to cross.

Excerpt from Permutations of a Self: Poems (Texas Review Press) by Thomas V. Nguyen; copyright 2019 by Thomas V. Nguyen; used with permission.