Haunt lonely and find when you lose your shadow
secretive house centipede on the old window
You pronounce Erinys as "Air-n-ease"
Alecto: the angry Magaera: the grudging

Tisiphone: the avenger (voice of revenge)
"Women guardians of the natural order"

Think of the morning dream with ghosts
Why draw the widow's card and wear the gorgeous

Queen of Swords crown Your job is
to rescue the not-dead woman before she enters

the incinerating garbage shoot wrangle silver
raccoon power Forever a fought doll

She said, "What do you know about Vietnam?"
Violet energy ingots Tenuous knowing moment



About this poem
"'Haunted Sonnet' is a sonnet among many sonnets that I tend to write (little songs). It is informed by dream and Greek myth and investigates the notion of haunts and of being haunted, a fury that feels primordial, archetypal feminine power aspects and the rupture and loss of diaspora."
-Hoa Nguyen

About Hoa Nguyen
Hoa Nguyen is the author of "Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008" (Wave Books, 2014). She teaches privately and at Ryerson University and lives in Toronto.


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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Hoa Nguyen. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate