American Poetry Review

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vol. 55 | no. 04

Hieu Minh Nguyen

The Dress

I never saw her wear it

out of the house. Confined

to the thin frame

of that floor-length mirror,

that floor-length dress.

Watching her sway

in her bedroom,

I learned beauty

was something to be

practiced. How to walk

with it. How to hold it out

for someone to touch.

Each time she caught me

wearing it she’d cry, then pray—

it hurt her, I imagine, to know

her son was being called away

by another woman.

I wailed when she made me

throw it in the trash, but stayed

silent when she came at me

with the hanger.

How was I to know beauty

was something I could ruin

for others by trying it on?

Found In Volume 55, No. 04

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Hieu Minh Nguyen

About the Author

Hieu Minh Nguyen is the author of three poetry collections, including This Way to the Sugar (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014) and Not Here (Coffee House Press, 2018), which won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from the Publishing Triangle. His honors include the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a McKnight Fellowship in Writing, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature

Fellowship. Hieu is a graduate from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Originally from the Twin Cities, Hieu lives in Oakland, California.

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