Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota



Even though it’s May & the ice cream truck
parked outside my apartment is somehow certain,
I have a hard time believing winter is somehow,
all of a sudden, over — the worst one of my life,
the woman at the bank tells me. Though I’d like to be,
it’s impossible to be prepared for everything.
Even the mundane hum of my phone catches me
off guard today. Every voice that says my name
is a voice I don’t think I could possibly leave
(it’s unfair to not ask for the things you need)
even though I think about it often, even though
leaving is a train headed somewhere I’d probably hate.
Crossing Lyndale to meet a friend for coffee
I have to maneuver around a hearse that pulled too far
into the crosswalk. It’s empty. Perhaps spring is here.
Perhaps it will all be worth it. Even though I knew
even then it was worth it, staying, I mean.
Even now, there is someone, somehow, waiting for me.

About this poem

Source: Poetry (December 2018)

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Written on 2018

Submitted by Drone232 on May 26, 2022

Modified on April 17, 2023

52 sec read
27

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFEGHIJKELMNOE
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 906
Words 175
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18

Hieu Minh Nguyen

Hieu Minh Nguyen is a queer Vietnamese American poet and performer based in Minneapolis. He is the author of the poetry collections Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018) and This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), which was named a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Minnesota Book Award. His work has appeared on the PBS Newshour and in Poetry magazine, Gulf Coast, BuzzFeed, Poetry London, Nashville Review, Indiana Review, among others. The recipient of a 2017 NEA fellowship for poetry, Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle magazine, and an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College. In 2018, Nguyen was awarded a the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. more…

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