Burning House

The feet of our comrades are swaying
from branches veiled with dust.

Love, listen—love me anyway.
There is no need for words now
only this nectar glazed in our eyes.
This house is burning. Their torches rain
like the fragments of a shattered sun
their white pupils glisten through
the flame’s curved fingers.

Wooden beams sizzling
as the doors of our sanctum erode
curling like the singed edges of a leaf.
The pictures we hung now bursting
into ember blossoms of memory.

As their axes pierce through our paper walls
we expire like this—hands busy
with the faithful task of loving
skin, bodies triumphant in this throne
of arms interlocked—defiant
to the inferno blackening our ankles.

And I promise to preserve you
until my voice is no more than the crackling
of burning bones. I will lick each flame
igniting on your pores and catch
their blazing arrows with my mouth
shouting our names.

When these walls collapse—cascading in streams
of ash and cinder, they will find us here:
smoldered shells of a lifetime’s work
a masterpiece crystallized into obsidian.
They will record these fires leaping
in my eyes, my tongue crumbling
in my lover’s mouth.


by Ocean Vuong



Ocean Vuong has been published in various journals including North Central Review, The Connecticut River Review, Convergence, Ganymede, the Raving Dove Review, WordRiot, Poetalk, and Barnwood among others. He emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1990 and now resides in NYC. He is also writes and edits for The Viet Nam Literature Project. "Burning House" is the title poem of his new chapbook.


Visit his blogspot: Ocean Vuong: The Momentum of Madness