From our Archives: Devotion by Ocean Vuong
Associate editor Andrew Walker on today’s “From our Archives” Bonus Content: “Just like a snowflake upon warm skin, Ocean Vuong’s poetry—and “Devotion,” in particular—holds a quick and quiet destruction. A savant of the surprising image, Vuong pushes and pulls the reader between burning feathers and snow sitting on the windowsill, between sedulous want and bodily fidelity. The poem—originally published here at Passages North—ends Vuong’s 2016 collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, and acts as a threshold back into the world after his devastating work, thrusting them into the blizzard of white space following that final line where they must exist changed, shifted, new.” (Issue 35, 2014)
Devotion
Instead, the year begins
with my knees
scraping the hardwood,
another man trembling
inside this mouth. Fresh snow
cracking on the window,
each flake a god I’ve shut out
for good. Because
the difference between prayer
and mercy—is how you move
the tongue. I press mine
to the naval’s familiar
whorl, those dark threads
descending towards
devotion. And there’s nothing
more holy than holding
a man’s heartbeat between
your teeth—sharpened
with want. This mouth, the last entry
into January: this hollow, this
muted scream silenced
at last, with a grenade
of white flowers. Fresh snow
crackling on the window
and so what—if my feathers
are burning. Even
with wings, the stars are still
too far away.
Ocean Vuong is the author of The New York Times bestselling poetry collection, Time is a Mother and The New York Times bestselling novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, which has been translated into 37 languages. A recipient of a 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2016, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, his honors include fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize.
