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Congratulations to Ocean Vuong, 2014 recipient of a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. Read "Ode to Masturbation" and "Into the Breach" below.

I met Ocean Vuong through the poems he read one night at Manhattan’s Bureau of General Services–Queer Division. While Vuong’s words struck me as delicate, even simple, their impact was gut-clenching, soul-piercing. His lines are like careful calipers opening us, each to each, as he bears out a heaviness meant not to hold us down but to unveil the magma underlying the presumption of life: just as light is both particle and wave, or as the human body is composed of more microbes than human cells, that which animates isn’t just one thing, it isn’t simply a life force—it is also decay. We are elements in motion that are not-us.

Vuong distills ideas. We steep in them. This is one way to open the world. Digging down in the dirt of it reveals that the heat emitted by rot is the engine of living’s mechanisms. “Ode to Masturbation” exemplifies a sensual unearthing that permits us slow-motion glances at the currents at work, holding us together as political (“lips like money / laramie jasper / & sanford towns”), desirous (“every rib / humming / the desperation / of unstruck / piano keys”), historical (“hard facts / gathering / the memory of rust”), spiritual (“the lord cut you / here / to remind us / where he came from”), and elemental (“you scrape the salt / off the cunt-cock / & call it / daylight”). We are nothing if not everything resonating, distant and unified by distance, the primordial soup of Vuong’s cum shot as “an articulation / of chewed stars.” This type of blasphemy illuminates “the if under every / utterance” that will save us from our certainties and enable us toward what we thought was elsewhere in the universe—like the light of dead stars emerging from ourselves.

—Amy King

Ode to Masturbation

because you

were never holy

only beautiful

enough

to be found

with a hook



in your mouth

water shook

like sparks

as they pulled

you up

& sometimes



your hand

is all you have

to hold

yourself

to this world

because it’s



the sound

not the prayer

that enters

the thunder not

the lightning

that wakes you



in lonely midnight

sheets holy

water smeared

between your thighs

where no man

ever drowned



from too much

thirst & when

is the cumshot not

an articulation

of chewed stars

go ahead—lift



the sugar-

crusted thumb

& teach

the tongue

of unbridled

nourishment



to be lost in

an image

is to find within it

a door so close

your eyes

& open reach



down with every rib

humming

the desperation

of unstruck

piano keys

some call this being



human some call this

walking but

you already know

it’s the briefest form

of flight yes even

the saints



remember this

the if under every

utterance

beneath

the breath brimmed

like cherry blossoms



foaming into no one’s

springtime

how often these lines

resemble claw marks

of your brothers

being dragged



away from you

you whose name

not heard

by the ear

but the smallest bones

in the graves you



who ignite the april air

with all your petals’

here here here who

twist through

barbedwired light

despite knowing



how color beckons

decapitation

i reach down

looking for you

in american dirt

in towns with names



like hope

celebration

success & sweet

lips like money

laramie jasper

& sanford towns



whose trees know

the weight of history

can bend their branches

to breaking

lines whose roots burrow

through stones



& hard facts

gathering

the memory of rust

& iron

mandibles

& amethyst yes



touch yourself

like this part

the softest wound’s

unhealable

hunger

after all



the lord cut you

here

to remind us

where he came from

pin this antlered

body back



to earth

cry out

until the dark fluents

each faceless

beast banished

from the ark



as you scrape the salt

off the cunt-cock

& call it

daylight

don’t

be afraid



to be this

illuminated

to be so bright

& empty

the bullets pass

right through

you

thinking

they have reached

the sky

as you press

your hand



to a blood-warm

body

like a word

being nailed

to its meaning

& lives

Into the Breach The only motive that there ever was was to . . . . keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them. —Jeffrey Dahmer I pull into the field, cut the engine. It’s simple: I just don’t know how to love a man gently. Tenderness a thing to be beaten into. Fireflies strung through sapphired dusk. You’re so quiet you’re almost tomorrow. The body made soft to keep us from loneliness. You said that as if the car was filling with river water. Don’t worry. There’s no water. Only your eyes closing. My tongue in the crux of your chest. Little black hairs like the legs of vanished insects. I never wanted the flesh. How it never fails to fail so accurately. But what if I broke through the skin’s thin page anyway & found the heart not the size of a fist but your mouth opening to the width of Jerusalem. What then? What hunger submits to no border. To love another man is to leave no one behind to forgive me. I want to leave no one behind. To keep & be kept. The way a field turns its secrets into peonies. The way light keeps its shadow by swallowing it.