
“The city so white is it ready for ink.”
Ocean Vuong
Few collections of poems have raised such raw, visceral hunger in me in recent years like Night sky with exit wounds by Ocean Vuong. Hunger for words running down my spine, pure voices made flesh in the revelation of ink travelling without respite, each poem necessary like breath yet taking my breath away, holding it still not to spoil the radiance taking place page after page. The way he weaves memories into desire, stitching them to one another to create tissue, connect the dead to the living, the white oblivion of snow to the promise of luminosity only darkness and shadows can bring.