Poetry: “In the Time of Tuberculosis” by Thi Nguyen
The speaker in Thi Nguyen’s “In the Time of Tuberculosis” describes a journey through a twisted and complicated set of events, but this long and complicated poem is memorable for its specificity and meticulous attention to detail. At times, it’s difficult to connect with this speaker because their frustration and pain are so expertly articulated; it’s painful and relatable and all too real. We have all been sick and we have all felt alone, and Nguyen ruthlessly and expertly taps into those psychic wounds. The illness might be ancient but the experience is current, urgent, and powerful, and readers will see themselves in this narrative just as our editors did, Hopefully, as we all share in this collective retelling, we can form community bonds and see how we are not alone at all–this community of poets is proof of that if nothing else—and thus, we can begin to heal.
In the Time of Tuberculosis
A cough is a call my body
makes. I hang up the call.
April 7, 2016
My body rings and rings. I raise
a palm to it. My mother scolds
me to answer it. A cousin thinks it’s a prank
call, intended to ruin a walk
in the park, up a little hill, a city slope.
June 5, 2016
A friend places her newborn
in my arms. I don’t know
what to do so I pretend
I don’t have arms. My eyes
respond to his sleeping ones.
Must not disturb.
My eyes press my lips
together. They suppress
the calls my body
wants to make. My body shakes
in retaliation, but the arms
are still.
June 27, 2016
Postnasal drips are common. Nothing
to worry about. You’re young, live
your life, the doctor says.
August 15, 2016
I sleep only to be awakened by a pest. The skin
is supposed to be a protective barrier. There is a hole
at the top of a little slope on my right cheek. The slope
is dense and hot. I scratch the side of my face,
my fingertips mix heat and mosquito saliva.
August 16, 2016
It’s hot outside. I stay inside
O blood and hot skin. I have both.
I don’t want to be her bloodmeal.
August 17, 2016
The four walls of my studio protect
me from blood feeding micro predators
that parasitize larger ones.
I am the larger one.
August 18, 2016
The four walls of my studio
protect the public
from my body’s incessant calls.
August 19, 2016
The four walls
are protective skin, a home
for a 29-year-old soul.
The soul is home
less without a body.
August 20, 2016
A neighbor puts his ear
against our shared wall.
He hears the ringtone as buzz
ing, as crackling rice paper
wings. An opened window
waves air my lungs gasp
for. Another mosquito
smells my carbon mouth
print. She answers with a flick
of her mouthpiece,
piercing my skin.
August 21, 2016
An opening makes the body
vulnerable. My mouth is constantly
opened. I am hungry, but I cannot put
food down. I get a busy tone. The calls
are coming in more frequently,
September 2, 2016
A bike ride requires exertion.
To exert my body, I need
air in the lungs. But the air hurts
me. It is a match to my fuel
full lungs. They burn. The flames
reach the underside
of my ribcage.
September 18, 2016
I curl into a crescent moon.
Head bowed, my mouth
points to my chest. The spittle
on my shirt is star
dust, like the ash
of a cremated body—
proof of a past existence. Losing
weight, I waste away.
October 2, 2016
I breathe deeply uninterrupted.
Fatigue washes over me.
October 7, 2016
The calls flood in like bullets,
a barrage just shooting out
my roaring mouth. They fail
to take out the something oblong
flushed against the width
of my esophagus. I struggle
to gulp down a glass of water.
As a swallow, I pray: Down
came the rain and washed
the spider out.
October 27, 2016
Blood pressure is a little high,
an x-ray is ordered. But nothing
to worry about. You’re young,
another doctor says.
October 27, 2016
I wait in the waiting room. A talk
show in Spanish is on. I’m reminded
that esperar means to wait
and to hope.
The doctor wears a facemask now,
beckoning me to return to the examination
room. Your lungs look bad. You cannot leave.
I realize too late she tricked me into a prison cell.
October 27, 2016
Were your coughs productive?
No.
Did you ever have night sweats?
No.
Are you homeless?
No.
Do you work or hang out with the homeless?
No.
Are you HIV positive?
No.
Were you born here?
Yes.
October 28, 2016
I lie on my back on sheets stiff from sterilization. The blue light from my phone wires me awake.
I look up tuberculosis—
waste away, decline, decay, atrophy or literally wasting of the body.
What good is the soul without a body?
How can containment happen if parts of the body is _______ away?
My hospital bed is as hard
as the bottom of a coffin.
October 28, 2016
An epidemiologist arrives. He ensures the room is sealed. He signs off that the room is airtight,
impenetrable. I must be contained. I’ve been contagious, I’ve been a pest—
informally to mean an annoyance,
archaically from the French word, peste or the Latin word, pestis, both meaning plague.
The Spanish word for to annoy is molestar which sounds similar to the English word, molest.
I’ve been a plague, a molestation.
October 29, 2016
Halloween weekend is when the monsters
are free. My teeth gnash to be let out. My hands
strike at the bars of my cage.
October 30, 2016
I have holes in my paper lungs. Like the holes
in the paper food the very hungry caterpillar ate
through. The TB bacteria must have been very hungry.
My body failed to sustain it. To contain it.
To contain me the hospital feeds
me a paper prescription.
And jello.
October 31, 2016
There is no mirror in my room.
A good thing.
What would I do with a face, half
disappeared?
November 1, 2016
No shower, no toilet.
Only a bucket and paper towels.
The first three stages of development for a mosquito are largely aquatic.
No water, no growth.
The word mosquito is Spanish for little fly.
My cousin texts me, you should’ve gone to the doctor sooner.
She ignores my replies.
Shoo fly don’t bother me,
I imagine her saying.
November 2, 2016
She still ignores me as if I was the bug
that bit her, that gave her that scar,
a permanent bug bite.
She had forgotten
that when she left Viet Nam
30 years ago, she was once dirty.
Given the TB vaccine,
she was made clean.
She was once an outsider
allowed to be let in.
I was born in the US.
I was born clean
but now I am dirty.
I’ve dirtied others.
I am not allowed outside,
I am kept inside, the door locked
from the outside.
November 4, 2016
It’s a beautiful day outside
my window. People share
their day together, they walk
with their backs turned against me,
away, away, I hear them say.
November 5, 2016
The calls have stopped.
I never thought it would be so lonely.
November 6, 2016
I find friends on Wikipedia,
writers and artists
that had tuberculosis. I
aspire to be added
to the ladder
as a rung below
John Keats.
November 8, 2016
Election night.
Riot in the streets.
My room, still sealed,
protects me.
Protects them too.
November 10, 2016
Art transforms, makes one transcendent beyond death. Drugs too. The drugs have contained the
bug. My body is sealed to keep it inside forever.
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
I am changed
I am alive
I am
I hear a whirring, a flapping of butterfly wings.
Finally, it is time to go home.
Thi Nguyen
Thi Nguyen is a California native, born in San Jose from Vietnamese refugees, and currently lives in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in creative writing, focusing on poetry, from the University of New Orleans (UNO). Her work has appeared in Broken Lens Journal, diaCritics, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been recognized with Honorable Mention for the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize and the Academy of American Poets Award in 2024. She also loves coffee and takes it with a splash of oat milk.
