MORE SURPRISE LILIES
By Hoa Nguyen
For Edward
from 40-year-old tubers red lapping petals spring
rain sprout from the gutter trough to the red maple
to the brick lined patio you built long ago
sand filled base timbers to collect
and pattern lilies surprising you in your eightieth
year along with the plastic and dead birch
the large holly with twinkle lights long defunct
surprise lilies with red flares and apparent dead
coming to life at the end of a long summer and beckon
me away across the flat plane of experience
as parts of the procession limped and staggered
a new known which is elsewhere returning
for art or an old pillowed place to rest to eat
stalked in red to meet the dead renewed there
WIND AND LIGHT HOLDING IT ALOFT
By Hoa Nguyen
pollinator legs sumac top collected
from the wetlands by the highway
and former brickworks now ‘Evergreen’
autumn 2022 paths walked
alone in a talking walk where you talk
wetland bog oxbow after the shape of
this fragment of lopped-off meandering river
(nourishing space). we meet there and agree
miscegenation is an ugly word when mongrel will do
something catches star net our people come from
she dips her red ear in and listens
--when Sumac speaks to the lake
Don Valley Parkway
About the author
“Born in the lower Mekong Delta and raised in the Washington DC area, Hoa Nguyen is a poet and educator teaching writing and poetics at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her books include Red Juice, the Griffin Prize-nominated Violet Energy Ingots, and A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure, a finalist for the National Book Award and the General Governor’s Literary Award. She’s the 2024 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, an Aquarius, and a Fire Horse. Her IG is @hn2626 and her Twitter is @peacehearty.”