Category: Poetry & Prose

To Have Met

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

Circles within circles clenched in a fist,
finger prints of mothers, fathers, of fathers oncle, ma grand-mère et grand-père,
Vietnamese blurred French – English dialect – adopted.
Held captive by four corners – owned by simplicities of mind, lesson well learned.
Combination of two sides, cinching an aged tradition,
Recycling words, welcoming of solitude in circumference chasms.

Plated orange-yellow poles upon, crimson grading pens upon, pink erasers upon,
yellow painted light wooden pencil between the webs of my fingers,
foreign and forced upon my uncoordinated hand,
ached and cramped knotted upon them, strung upon my tangled fingers – alien.
Blind to possibility, possible to the blind,
your warm hand guiding mine, gliding streaks of graphite-lead onto smooth bamboo paper.

Inked loose leaf paper upon sheets of bent thoughts meant to be traced upon.
Handwriting of the foreign, different from the raced,
language to be taught, words to be learned,
syllables chopped, from tongue to lips, to be refused by air,
my lips followed yours, by a semblance in matter,
your dashes guide me, synchronizing to your hand before smooth, a poem you wrote.

Sawed cut chopsticks to count upon mixed upon erasers, grips upon,
wrinkled skin between clenched newborn fists,
opened wide, exposing the wings they possessed between each finger,
creases created to count with father’s hitchhiker’s thumb,
until one realized that there was more to count,
with the spaces between mother’s joints on her wide hands, and long fingers.

Canisters of undeveloped films, reminders that one has not rendered,
Fluent spheres develop in your mind, death-sentence tolled,
A color and composition – segments of hued breaths you took between shutters unraveling that you belong—intertwining my foreign fingers in your hair.
Words you’ve forgotten, shriveled hands cracked,
I wrote the words you could no longer teach me: to have met.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, To Have Met

Counting Countenances

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

Among a white room, come blank semblances of shadows,

whisper are tangled between specks of madness.

Thoughts – possibly of weakness are apologetic through an unsighted telescope,

quiet contentions,

restless legislations,

tedious clicking…

 

Fractions, fragments, and frictions of fictions in formal semantics: Nascent.

For other remote time swarming, zoning , warping,

to have reduced to one – rarely.

As a paper of processes for phylum,

through an  algorithm of Ambien:

Repetitive tides of people here, in blurs.                                                     Click.

 

Faint flights of fright in foreign tongue, frail to forbidden fore seers.

Reflected upon the intimidation in immigrant irises,

their apologetic extermination returning to one,

As a share of the atmosphere roaring,

through exterminating cries, fighting tension,

Fog hazes faces and subsides as one.                            Click.                     Click.

 

Skilled hands twist to intertwined grimaces beclouding another,

hazed from one profile to presentation.

Slight slithers to another shoulders, words slurred as

deep sighs, long pauses — speak  so silently, quietly.

Wait so mysteriously by civilization,

familiar frowns, similar scowls.                   Click.                     Click.                     Click.

 

A beacon just drifting midair colliding with others amongst the atmosphere.

Floating, with the breeze , to be forgotten when death is inevitable,

lie in the in between a course of immortality and early death.

afraid of admitting that they are lost,

lost as a pinnacle,

in complete abyss…      Click                      Click.                      Click.                       Click.

 

If we never met, then I wouldn’t have to lose you.

Mistake Conscience with Fate – destiny with luck when bitterness overcomes you,

that there is a pattern in the narratives, you don’t want to admit.

There is fork in the road, where your soul gets indecisive.

There is a crossroad where, there is a light, where you yearn to explore,

for everyone’s own world to collide.

 

There is a collision

with their own thoughts expression – those you don’t know about…

Click.                       Click                       Click.                       Click.                        Click.

 –                Emilyn Nguyen, Counting Countenances

The Good

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I want to imagine falling fast because you’ve pushed me off a bridge but before I go, kiss me quickly while making it last so I can determine how much it will hurt when you say goodbye. To determine if it was too soon or too late because I had understood that you were the one that didn’t feel the same. Yet, I understand that people come and people go but I don’t ever want to say goodbye to you. I question why you couldn’t let the future pass and simply let go. I only ever so slightly want to say goodnight to you. I only hope that the good in our good nights will mean I will see you in my dreams and goodbyes will mean that we will always end up meeting again tomorrow. I want to see you, even if it means for a slight minute like the moon meets the sun just before daylight forty five minutes after five and after the late eight o’clock orange-crimson sunset. You were convinced that there was no good in goodbye; no good in goodnight, but at first hand it may appear too hard, but look again. Always look again. I promise there’s good in that.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, The Good

The Mistakes

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

When we make mistakes, do we really learn from them?

Especially when we know that our mistakes lie in the witness of others, and our minds ruin the fact that our mistakes will never go forgotten — will never be forgiven. You tell yourself that you were just a child, you couldn’t possibly know. Yet, your mind circles around the fact that your mistake will linger in the air forever and you cannot improve because you cannot take it back.

 It’s already been done: a mistake it was exhibited for show.

So when I ask, do we really learn from our mistakes, I respond, “no”.

I live in them, I swim in them, and they remind me how I must do better. They tell me how I’ve done wrong, and how much I’ve to improve: I’ve to improve everything. I try harder to improve my craft, but God Damn, the mind of an over-thinker will emphasize that “No, whatever you do, you’ve wronged the first time — and that’s the only time that matters.”

Back Up.

No.

Mistakes build character, and even though your head is wrapped up, tangled in, reliving in, and retracing the fact that you’ve made a mistake, it tells me so much that you’re trying. Even though you have a small voice, and your body seems like wither at the sight of a crowd, your mistake is done — it’s over, and if you believe that you are defined by it, than what you don’t know is: you are not. You are shaped by it. Because of it, you will thrive in all your endeavors. I promise you that you will not make the same mistake more than three times, because you’ve put so much thought into it, and the part of you that cares too much will remember that you are determined enough to remember not to. If you do: the first time is to warn you; the second time is to persuade you; and the third time is to … see. I told you.

So if I ask the question again, do we learn from our mistakes, I say,

Perhaps our mistakes must learn from us.

Do they know how much we emphasize them over the good, no matter how little it might have been. More than they know, we know the most that we’ve made them, and we have replayed them over in our heads, seeing people shake their head at us until our minds are dry in our mistakes. What we know is that we know that mistakes build character beside its negative connotation. Not making mistakes is inevitable. It doesn’t make you a failure.

The next time you make a mistake, a question echoes: When we make mistakes, do we really learn from them? Especially when we know that our mistakes lie in the witness of others, and our minds ruin the fact that our mistakes will never go forgotten — will never be forgiven. In the moment that your mind is hovering in uneasy murmurs or doubts, and questions, they have already been:

Forgotten – 

Have Already Been Forgiven.

 –             Emilyn Nguyen, The Mistakes

In Between the Lines

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

“My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness.”

– Virginia Woolf, Selected Letters

Reading Virginia,
as if I understand her morals.
“Do not,” She has written.

Analyzing Woolf,
“One cannot think well,” she says.
my tongue is dry of new air, to “…love well…”

“…sleep well…” – Nightmares mostly,
leftover sleep and a dew of overdue promises
evaporating off my lips,  purging with blood.

She ended, “…if one has not dined well.”
I began: “Do Not Speak to me about Hunger;
Speak to me about War.”

Here I stay: barefooted in between
airport tile floors –  they tell me,
Gritting my teeth to the dreams,
forbidden desire and will to shining silver linings.

The cruelty, unrivaled, taking parts of a dream,
leaving most to die, but she’s hungry,
they told her the war’s over, but she won’t heel,
filling a God-sized hole.

–         Emilyn Nguyen, In Between the Lines

3:45

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

From midnight on, I couldn’t help staring at the light ignited from the phone; waiting anxiously for a message I, for some reason, knew I wouldn’t receive. The night is longer than day, so cruel of overthinking possibility being held in the air. To add, the moon couldn’t keep away, its light kept shining; temping me to call, like the loose thread on my sheets I couldn’t resist to pull – I didn’t. I couldn’t wait till day, so the moon could meet the sun, and the stars could lie in the clouds. The coldness of the night’s snow shown sheets embraced the moon, cradled me into the clean white blankets, but I wanted the embrace of the burning sun as it would rage. Rage for me, rage at the moon.  By 1 o’clock, the sheets became my comfort embedding itself into the heat I radiate, waiting impatiently. Imagining the warmth of my blankets as the radiating heat of your body against mine. By 2 o’clock, I went unnoticed, the sky lightening, my crippling exhaustion leaving me numb. My eyelids heavy at the hallucinations I was witnessing. You became a vision, and like the moon you were fading, fading – gone. My fascination towards phone lights dimmed towards to growing moon – bigger and smaller like the strength of my heart. At 2:45, I became taunted to close my eyes completely. Through withdrawal, I only crash, slipping slowly under my sheets completely. I only fear that I will suffocate myself; deprive myself of air before 3. From the moon to the stars, counted the stars and the constellations like I counted the minutes I waited. The 45 after 2, taunted me, the titanic sinking deeper in my heart. Second per second, minute per minute waiting until 3. By 3:45, I only saw how your eyes lit up when you saw me in the night’s moonlight, trying to count the stars between our giggles in our dreams…

–         Emilyn Nguyen, 3:45 A.M

Roses

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose
Her grandmother told her that her delicate, intricate, beveling beauty closely resembled one of a rose. On lovely, tender spring mornings, she had soft, rosy pink cheeks complimenting her pink lips, and below lengthy, stem – like legs. Her soft skin radiated with a wonderful floral scent and even when it rained, her freckles seemed to dance across her face like raindrops mirroring the dainty dew droplets that lie upon her white – pink petals. Her whole lively being was recognized to draw in others – to love and to be loved – but without knowing: to capture the victims in her hidden, disastrous thorns. Her heart lived outside her chest, hours away at your window garden, roses were her grandmother favorite. When vines reach up through my head again, and the roots sew themselves to my toes, to be consumed by their splendor again and then realizing she is gone, and there is nothing growing inside you. If winters weren’t so cold, I’ll water from the roots to the vines to become the rose beside the garden inside of her that her grandmother once spoke of.
–         Emilyn Nguyen, Roses

Meghana

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

In the reflection of the sunrise,
a cloud disrupts the clear sky with one single tear,
and I can see the joy in the eyes of those who held you first:

White, and pure into their hands, before it evaporates. Notice how she smiles, molding into the palms of your hands, but she may stay or leave you, no matter what she’ll leave you a mark of goodness, reminding you that it exists. It might be an unparticular date, January 27th, but the clouds still form. There might be rain, maybe snow today, perhaps hail, but this cloud stands alone, brushing dust off the back of her hand to start waving, whispering her wishes in a bashful hush. “Something ought to come out of those clouds, something out to come of me.”  Twisting through the white-blue sky, a background of blue snow, her words are a reason to become winded. She becomes all of the elements of the sky that one holds between their fingers while their head is tilted back and up blinded by the brightness of the sky. You don’t even know. Within you, you’ve shared stories, and painted in breezes. Illusions unfold, and rewind together within you sometimes you escape once again though… you always return to watch over me once again. Sometimes, you will not say a word, but in visuals you write in strength, smiles and hope – aspiring to inspire. You grow in shapes and sizes, aside the bright sun, and you’re a cloud. You can become everything and anything here or even beyond the white-blue skies.

It feels like a cotton breeze,
as I watch the sun rise, and you appear.
“Meghana,” they call you.

–               Emilyn Nguyen, Meghana

Bittersweet

Posted on by Emilyn in Prose

I am bitter.

I am not sweet.

I am not even a taste of in between. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse of both lemon taffies, and my grandmother’s lemonade. I am so very bitter.

I admit I will never stop appreciating the beauty of – yellow custard lemon tarts, for its ability to be sour, and at the same time: tasteful. You see, I am very good at using useless metaphors, weak symbolism, and analogies that speak like chimes to the people of the gray.

I over analyze life, but I am very bad at telling people how I feel – so he interrupts me, and says that I am sweet, never bitter, “and if you don’t believe me, you’ll believe me when I tell you that your voice is my favorite sound, no matter what words you use – from your analogies, weak symbolism, and useless metaphors. I must be the people of the gray.”

You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. I repeat that it is because I am very bad at telling people how I feel, but especially because he is too sweet, and this might mean that I am in love with him still. I am very bitter at even the idea love.

I will admit though, that I am starting to believe in him. His eyes are too soft for me to handle – too sweet, and I don’t think you understand my fear when you look at me with those eyes and tell me that you think that I am sweet, that inside…

“I love you.”

I am not sweet. I am bitter. I am not even a taste of in between. I have repeated, and don’t you dare repeat those words, because I don’t believe in love. I don’t know what love is. I am no one to love. I am not bittersweet with a glimpse between my mother’s key lime pie, and my father’s burnt lemon tarts. I am bitter. You don’t understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you. He is too sweet, and I am too afraid to admit that I am vulnerable – so I am bitter as a hypocrite confessing my feelings to the people of the gray.

They tell me that I shouldn’t invite them into my life if they are inconsistently in love, but love is anything but inconsistent. For since the second I have met I fell in love with his sweet eyes.

You couldn’t possibly understand why I don’t discuss my first love with you and it is because he is sweet, and I can’t fight the bitter sweetness to be vulnerable to admit for the first time – to any one:

“I love you too.”

–            Emilyn Nguyen, Bittersweet

 

 

Pigeons

Posted on by Emilyn in Poetry

(Sometimes) Lovers are strangers – recipients of commerce.

Lend me a pen for swooping calligraphy.
Give me a time,
a place at the Willow Tree
blooming orchids of fate but,

(You) Mourn bliss, sacrificed for Oblivion.

No sense,
no Holy Halos –
Hopes to be forward but short –

hopelessly distant,

Birds (have to) bless you
beneath the sun’s radiance –
fly to you, to wish to embrace you.

Carrying penned words of:
ardent thanks,
sincere sympathy,
greetings …

then sealed.

Free (fall) freedom feelings:
blushed cheeks,
scarlet smiles,
faint porcelain skin,

(Before) falling head on in love with words,
setting skies, and singing birds –

I fell over my heels with reminiscing of home.

Free (flying) as the high atmosphere –
unslept hours staring at the depth of his breath,

To stare to an endless dream.

(Let go) Exhale a petal,
pick a petal,
my dear mockingbird.

Love me or Love me not –

pick a petal,

drop a petal…

Thoughts (so) breathlessly taken,
here or there,
timed and placed.

(You) Send me part two,
(can) will fly from heaven,

and back to me.

When birds (fly) amongst the sky to you and (back),
Only to settle where it may: (to me)

penned –home.

–               Emilyn Nguyen, Pigeons