<div><p>Ocean Vuong was born in Saigon and moved as a child refugee to Connecticut, before moving to New York City to become a writer. When he couldn't afford a place to sleep, he spent nights writing poetry at Penn Station.</p><p>In his haunting and fearless debut, Vuong walks a tightrope of vulnerability and reflects upon his family in exile, a reverential queer love, and the personal adoption of a sometimes inexplicable nation. Vuong's poems show, through breath, cadence, and unrepentant enthrallment, that a gentle palm on a chest can calm the most necessary of hungers.</p><p><b>Torso of Air</b></p><p><i>Suppose you do change your life.<br>&amp; the body is more than</i></p><p><i>a portion of nightsealed<br>with bruises. Suppose you woke</i></p><p><i>&amp; found your shadow replaced<br>by a black wolf. The boy, beautiful </i></p><p><i>&amp; gone. So you take the knife to the wall<br>instead. You carve &amp; carve</i></p><p><i>until a coin of light appears<br>&amp; you get to look in, at last,</i></p><p><i>on happiness. The eye<br>staring back from the other side</i></p><p><i>waiting.</i></p><p>Born in Saigon, Vietnam, <b>Ocean Vuong </b>attended Brooklyn, College. He is the author of two chapbooks as well as a full-length collection,<i>Night Sky with Exit Wounds</i>. A 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellow and winner of the 2014 Pushcart Prize, Ocean Vuong lives in New York City, New York.</p></div>