<![CDATA[QUYEN NGUYEN-LE - Poems]]>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 02:42:52 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Refugio Campamento // Refugee Camp ]]>Tue, 09 Dec 2014 00:51:40 GMThttp://www.quyennl.com/poems/refugio-campamento-refugee-camp

35mm Disposable Camera 
Parque Torres Del Paine, Dec 2014

My father wonders how I can leave everything to go here

​alone

But at this southern tip of the world,
seemingly so far from anything even remotely Vietnamese,
I see the words “Chile” and “Vietnam” in the same sentence

Viet Nam still haunts me, 
Viet Nam nudges at me from the peripheries of historical pages,

and suddenly
I know
Viet Nam will never leave me alone.
]]><![CDATA["¿pololeas?"]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2014 07:09:16 GMThttp://www.quyennl.com/poems/pololeasi kissed you tenderly as i left,
sunlight fluttered through the gloomy morning clouds
…no, it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay, i say

and i left you just like that.
but maybe just maybe perhaps somehow you had possibly...

te extraño
strange, you are a stranger now
but we were sometimes strangers even then.
​
in the land of poets,
but it was your poetry that sunk my heart
and i’m sorry i couldn’t have been so much better.

¿pololeas? she asked me

lately, i seem to always be at a loss for words
¿me entiendes?¿cachái?
but how could i even begin to find the words 
to separate you, so intimately entwined into all that i am,
all that i cannot yet wholly be

here
in this new place

you are the unpronounced s’,
a ghost, pauses, ellipses, vague words,
sentences left unfinished
the missing piece of my heart no one can know i once had]]>