"Ficus Carica Sonnet" by Hoa Nguyen

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( April 6, 2018 [Ficus Carica Sonnet]( [Hoa Nguyen]( Cinched belt tugged tight around the heart 5 or 6 aerial roots dangling A strangler fig Do homeless ancestors live inside the tree? Child of noise Hold the loosened ends You may miss the moon or fall in love with it Embrace ashes I too am far removed A thirst that wanders thirsting And I could never ask the name of the boy who died A baby boy who died but what could you do and maybe words hang in sinew and care Writer of dead words or living words and life’s hammer Encase the host tree and erase it I don’t know the folk songs on farms far from here The dead buried and gone To dig the grave Who dug the graves Darling The sea widens for you tonight and deepens [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2018 Hoa Nguyen. Used with permission of the author. [Hoa Nguyen reads "Ficus Carica Sonnet."]( About This Poem “I wrote this sonnet at Tet 2018 while visiting Vietnam for the first time since leaving the country as a young child. It was inspired by walks around the Old Quarter of Hanoi as I considered aspects of memory, lore, events, diaspora, inheritance, distance, and rupture. The poem was also born from my appreciation of venerated trees adorned with incense and other offerings for Tet as appeals to ancestors, wronged ghosts, or wandering spirits.” —Hoa Nguyen [Hoa Nguyen]( Born in the Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington, D.C., area, Hoa Nguyen is the author, most recently, of Violet Energy Ingots (Wave Books, 2016), nominated for a 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing and lives in Toronto, Ontario. Photo credit: Vincent Tran [more-at-poets]( [Violet Energy Ingots]( Poetry by Nguyen [Violet Energy Ingots]( (Wave Books, 2016) "Bomb Crater Sky" by Lam Thi My Da [read-more]( "Kissing in Vietnamese" by Ocean Vuong [read-more]( "Los Angeles, Manila, Đà Nẵng" by Cathy Linh Che [read-more]( April Guest Editor: Tracy K. Smith Thanks to Tracy K. Smith, United States poet laureate and author of Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about [Smith]( and our [guest editors for the year.]( Help Support Poem-a-Day If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a [monthly donation]( or [one-time gift]( to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038