Hoa Nguyễn

 

from Red Juice (Wave Books, 2014)

The Six of Wands tarot card as ceremonial knife is a celebratory application. I sliced the inside of my left cheek with the edge of the card, blood on the tongue reading in the serial cuts, ordered to taste. The map the reader wants and the abandonment that occurs match if the reader wants to disappear. We are our own best meats. We are our own fountains of red juice. Read the poems right off the palate (from “Add Some Blue”):

Blue can spell your name         I don’t
know that yet either        wrapped up
in the snake’s coil        and wipe my hands

You have all the blue a little bit of
blue        like a blue turtle
encased in red-blue        blue-red
the throbbing vein

These vascular vernaculars they are rolling on, the poems. I sliced the inside of my right cheek, interrupting salts on their nutrient shuttle. This flow increased the poem’s metallic, HOLD ON, blossom. Hecate winds arteries into the threshold—the poet has claimed her space—the poet has her six wands ascending. Red tip of the card sucked to pink. Sucked further to white. Murmur about the bleeding, the little wounds open and close inside my mouth as my mouth opens and closes. Filter blood and saliva through the words (from “They Sell You What Disappears”):

They sell you what disappears        it’s a vague “they”
maybe capital T               who are they and mostly
poorly paid in China

Why does this garlic come from China?
It’s vague to me               shipping bulbous netted bulbs
Cargo doused with fungicide and growth inhibitor

What disappears is vague                I can’t trade for much
I can cook              teach you cooking                ferment
bread or poetry                I can sell my plasma