Ocean Vuong

Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

The Last Dinosaur

by Ocean Vuong

When they ask me what it’s like, I tell them
imagine being born in a hospice
in flames. As my relatives melted, I stood
on one leg, raised my arms, shut my eyes & thought:
tree tree tree as death passed me—untouched.
I didn’t know god saw in us a failed
attempt at heaven. Didn’t know my eyes had three
shades of white but only one image
of my mother. She’s standing under an ancient
redwood, sad that her time on earth is all
she owns. O human, I’m not mad at you for winning
but that you never wished for more. Emperor
of language, why didn’t you master No
without forgetting maybe? Sure, we can
make out if you want, but I’m warning you—
it’s a lot. Sometimes I think gravity
was like: To be brutally honest . . . & then
never stopped talking. I guess what I mean
is that I ate the apple not because the man lied
when he said I was born of his rib
but that I wanted to fill myself with its hunger
for the ground, where the bones of my people
still dream of me. I bet the light on this page
isn’t invented yet. I bet you never guessed
that my ass was once a small-town
wonder. That the triceratops went nuts
when I danced. How once, after weeks
of drought, I walked through my brother’s laughter
just to feel the rain. O wind-broke wanderer, widow of hope
& ha-has. O sister, dropped seed—help me—
I was made to die but I’m here to stay.

About the Author

Writer, professor, and photographer, Ocean Vuong is the author of The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam and raised in Hartford, Connecticut in a working class family of nail salon and factory laborers, he currently splits his time between western Massachusetts and New York City, where he serves as a Professor in Modern Poetry and Poetics in the MFA Program at NYU.

Queer Poem a Day

Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.