Come Clean

Joshua Nguyen (Author)

9780299336042

Paperback / softback, published 30 November 2021

96 pages
22.9 x 17.8 x 0.6 cm, 0.198 kg

Joshua Nguyen's sharp, songlike, and often experimental collection compartmentalizes past trauma--sexual and generational--through the quotidian. Poems aim to confront the speaker's past by physically, and mentally, cleaning up. Here, the Asian-American masculine interrogates the domestic space through the sensual and finds healing through family and in everyday rhythms: rinsing rice until the water runs clear, folding clean shirts, and attempts at re-creating an unwritten family recipe. Yet past wounds remain present like permanent marker under layers of paint or spilled fish sauce set into car upholstery. Infused with the Shinto-inspired organizing practices of KonMari and the catchy nihilism of Mitski's songs, the poems in Come Clean unpack, organize, and tidy up life's messy joys and hurtful chaos with intimacy, grace, and vulnerability.



No matter how smattered my insides,

I am relieved that I left my room tidy—
One less ugly sight.
 
I always wanted to die clean & pretty
while my dreams made music in the night.

—Excerpt from "Last Words"

• Contents
• Save Me, Marie Kondo
• March 4th
• My First Memory
• Wisconsin Has A Place in My Heart &
  I Just Want It to Let Go
• My Marie Kondo Manifesto
• Father, the Father
• Washing Rice [American 
  Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• My Brother Explains Driving
• A Dirty Floor in The Key of Elbows
• Peeling Eggs [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• Bunk Bed
• Toast / Butter / Sugar
• Blessing the House
• Marie Kondo Is My Hero: A Lesson on Folding Undergarments
• First Day of School Aubade
• After I Was Mistaken for the Stripper While Delivering Barbeque to an All-White Bachelorette Party
• Dim Sum Depression
• Scratch My Back &
  I’
  ll Love You Forever
• An Argument About Being Needy While Underneath Binary Stars
• Marie Kondo Is My Hero: A Lesson on Clothing
• Add Coconut Water [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• Exhaustion [But Every Time Leela Rose Kisses a Random Asian Man in The Street, A New Stanza Begins &
  The Amount of Words Between The Boxes Increase By 1]
• Self-Portrait as The Hand Towel Which Hangs Above The Toilet
• In the Bathroom After Eating Flaming Hot Cheetos
• Come Clean
• I Fall In Love With The Scientist Behind The Mask
• Speak Quotidian to Me
• One Night Withstand
• Funny as Fuck
• Add Pepper To Taste The Dark [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• 20 Things To Do Before You Leave The Restaurant Job You Hate
• Google Calendar for My Imposter Syndrome
• A Failed American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t Responds
• Last Words [Extended Cento]
• The Ritual of Mourning Has Changed
• Vietnamese Bedwetting Stories
• Thị
  t Kho
• In Praise of my Threaded Eyebrows
• Dicing Garlic [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• My Father Explains Employment
• My Mother Explains Universal Healthcare
• My Cat Doesn’
  t Grasp Object Permanence
• Marie Kondo Is My Hero: On Organizing Christmas
• Ode to My Brother’
  s V-neck
• My Sister Listens to ‘
  Run River North’
  For the First Time
• This Season is My Greenhouse
• Marinate Using Fish Sauce [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• I Don’
  t Trust the Dishwasher
• Mother, One Day I Will Cook For You [American Lụ
  c BÁ
  t]
• Hoarder
• Notes
• Acknowledgments