Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Queer poet Ocean Vuong published Night Sky With Exit Wounds in 2016, and New Yorker Magazine named Vuong’s debut poetry as one of the ten books poetry book of that year. Vuong was born in Ho Chi Minh City in 1988 and exquisitely details the scenes from Vietnam’s historic trauma. “Milkflower petals in the street/like pieces of a girl’s dress,” is Vuong’s memory of the ash drifting over the dead and injured during the fall of Saigon, when Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” was being piped into the streets. Young love is discovered, “Show me how ruin makes a home/out of hip bones.//teach me to hold a man the way thirst holds water.” Vuong presents depression, queer sexuality, domestic abuse, and the violence his family experienced during the war and as refugees. “American soldier fucked a Vietnamese farm girl. Thus my mother exists./Thus I exist./Thus no bombs = no family = no me. Yikes.” The people in Vuong’s poetry all speak with an unfiltered voice, with pure emotion that makes for excellent political poetry. —Nancy Snyder
Exclusive content for All Access members continues below.