“To be a dam for damage. My shittyness will not enter the world, I thought, and quickly became my own hero.”
Time Is a Mother
Ocean Vuong
“I’m trying to be real but it costs too much.”
Time Is a Mother
Ocean Vuong
I finished Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong! That was a very pretty poetry collection, some poems and verses were beautiful and memorable (“Not Even” in particular left quite its mark), but I feel like others were less accessible…? For some I just could not figure out the rhythm for the life of me which made the reading experience a bit strenuous imo… I’m not sure if it’s because I’m just not used to reading poetry, or if it’s to do with Ocean Vuong’s style, but I think it was harder for me to understand what he was trying to show/tell than in Night Sky with Exit Wounds or On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. For many of the poems I think I need to re-read them carefully and really exert myself to see what kind of image he’s trying to create.
Annnd now I’ve just started reading Minor Feeling by Cathy Park Hong and I can tell already that I’m going to love this one lol
Time Is a Mother, Ocean Vuong
text ID: They say the earth spins and that’s why we fall but everyone knows it’s the music. It’s been proven difficult to dance to machine-gun fire.
“because that’s what mothers do. they wait. they stand still until their children belong to someone else.”
stars. or rather, the drains of heaven - waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just enough for us to slip through
Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong
Time Is a Mother, Ocean Vuong
text ID: but the birds are just holes in the gunshot sky
How sweet. That rain. How something that lives to fall can be, nothing but sweet
Night Sky With Exit Wounds, Ocean Vuong
It's true I'm not a writer / but a faucet underwater.
— Ocean Vuong, The Last Prom Queen in Antarctica
SPY×FAMILY + On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The sadness in him ends in me tonight.
— Ocean Vuong, from “Beautiful Short Loser,” Time Is a Mother
Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven--waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.
Ocean Vuong, Immigrant Haibun
“the way death enters
anything fully
without a trace”
Time Is a Mother
Ocean Vuong
“how our hands hurt us, then give us / the world. How you can love the world / until there’s nothing left to love / but yourself.”
— Ocean Vuong, Tell Me Something Good
