MY CONCEPTION

Brushing the few ebony strands
that spill onto her forehead away—
he paws at the nape and momentarily visits her

bare chest.  She looks up—merely—
and blooms.  Flung aside are the covers for
the summer night air is oppressively muggy.

Past their window—occasionally—
a breeze hushes by—
like a prayer—consoling, laden with portents.

And in an instant:

swifter than when the pen meets
the page—that visible striking
of an internal thought—

he glides into—
over—
her.

Their silhouettes pitch upward and
sink tenderly, in succession, into
the gauzy sheet—

—one
dashing sight to behold.
At the end,

they lay breathless,
elbows touching,
simply desiring peace.

Outside, it begins to rain—

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY W/
          A BUNCH OF ABBR. & ACRONYMS               

And I’ll turn down eternity unless…
—Vladimir Nabokov

Life of the Mind, was ushered in2 @ Hobart College
by JC—not Jesus Christ—but by the Big G, my former prof Jim Crenner.
4 tuff—confusing—edifying—4 delightful yrs.
Returned 2 SD after grad w/ BA in English, ’04.

Went 2 club every wknd 4 EDM—sounds of my gen
—then would give head @ CSD—
not a discothek but a sex establishment.
There, always risk of HIV, other STIs.

Fall ’06. Moved 2 NYC.
Struck by train in B’klyn a yr later.
Was in ICU in coma w/ a trach’ tube 4 the 1 st of 4 months
@ Kingsbrook.

After being discharged, 2 un-bore self while recovering
& being unemployed, urs truly started a blog called Binh
Around the City—BATC—bat-SEE—a sly allusion 2 the line
“In a dark time, the eye begins to [oo]”

Returned 2 West Coast 2 recoup. Diagnosed w/ schizophrenia
& have been receiving care thru UPAC—
—where my therapist is Grace.

2015 AD.

I write this—the melancholy & the tenderness
of mortal life; the passion & the pain—
as John Shade put it in VN’s novel which I read that 1 st yr @ Hobart.

My art: —these fragments, in union, constituting my life.

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Binh H. Nguyen studied literature and creative writing with Jim Crenner at Hobart College, where he founded and edited SCRY! A Nexus of Politics and the Arts (Anne Carson was among its contributors). Nguyen conducted an interview with the American novelist-poet Katherine Towler and co-translated the poems of Mario Bojórquez for Poetry International. He writes theater reviews for the San Diego Reader. Nguyen is in his final semester in the MFA degree in poetry writing at SDSU and is the founder and curator of Thru a Soft Tube, a monthly reading series in San Diego.