Frontier OPEN 2020 Finalists: Josh Nguyen, Remi Recchia, and Sabrina San Miguel
First, a sincere thank you to all the finalists for partnering with us. All of these poems deserve high praise. For the final Part 3, we’re sharing work by Joshua Nguyen, Remi Recchia, and Sabrina San Miguel. You can read Part 1 of the finalists here, Part 2 here, and see the Winner, Kayleb Rae Candrelli, here.
Hoarder
by Joshua Nguyen
Joshua Nguyen is a bisexual Vietnamese-American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He is the author of the chapbook, “American Lục Bát for My Mother” (forthcoming, March 2021, Bull City Press) and has received fellowships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sundress Academy For The Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He has been published in The Offing, Wildness, American Poetry Review, The Texas Review, PANK, Auburn Avenue, Crab Orchard Review, and Gulf Coast Mag. He has also been featured on both the “VS” podcast and Tracy K. Smith’s, “The Slowdown”. He is a bubble tea connoisseur and works in a kitchen. His debut poetry collection, “Come Clean” (forthcoming, fall 2021, University of Wisconsin Press), was the winner of the 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. He is a PhD student at The University of Mississippi, where he also received his MFA.
Walking with My Lover to Bury Our Dead Fish
by Remi Recchia
Slow-breathed and boot-clad, we
walk to the lake with our dead Betta
fish in hand. You placed her tail-
down in a children’s beach
pail. It’s midnight and we are not
supposed to be out, but at least
here the reeds will mourn for us, make
space for our empty teeth. The stars
swarm like golden mosquitoes. I can taste
fresh humming in my throat. My feet
slip when we meet the dock. We hold the pail
together. The pail is still. Our pale
hands are still. Had our mouths been
moving, dead language would have wrinkled
currents deep within the lake. You wrinkle
currents deep within me. When I proposed
last year, I felt your yes settle
inside my chest. I adore you through bed-
sheets, through dinner, through trinkets
snatched like a magpie, so many tokens
cluttering your dresser. We swaddle each
other in bubble wrap every morning. No
bruises here, we say. Pass the bubble
wrap. Can a fish be tucked
safe in bubble wrap? I suppose we didn’t try
hard enough, and now we’ll never know, but my
darling, all I want now is to propose
over and over and over again, read
yesyesyes on your lips, scoop
you back home. I want to live in your soft
thighs. You let me enter each night; my body
never wants to leave, but first we have to let
go the thing we could have raised
together. We turn the plastic bucket
upside down, fish so small she doesn’t even
splash. I see one pink fin poke through coarse
gravel. And then the moon wakes up blazing
silver, and the lake is illuminated—
your eyes reflect everything that has ever
been perfect, and it’s almost like we never
killed anything at all.
Remi Recchia is a poet and essayist from Kalamazoo, Michigan. He is a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at Oklahoma State University. He currently serves as an associate editor for the Cimarron Review. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Remi’s work has appeared or will soon appear in Columbia Online Journal, Harpur Palate, and Juked, among others. He holds an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University.
Teaching your Homegirl about the Root Chakra
by Sabrina San Miguel
