Content Warning: Suicidality Connor and Jack think through Diana Khoi Nguyen's remarkable poem "Family Ties," part of her haunting debut collection Ghost Of. They discuss the complex emotional textures Nguyen evokes in the poem, the challenges of representations of suicide, and ideas of family, self, and metaphorical webs. More on Nguyen here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/diana-khoi-nguyen Family Ties By: Diana Khoi Nguyen Gradually a girl’s innocence itself becomes her major crime A doe and her two fawns bent low in the sumac along the bank of a highway, the pinched peach of their ears twitching in the heat Into the disordered evening my brother cut out only his face from every photograph in the hall, carefully slipping each frame back into position What good does it do? Decades of no faces other than our own chipping faces What good does it do, this resemblance to nothing we know of the dollhouse New parents watch their newborn resting in a sunny patch of an empty room, the newborn making sense of its container— And from the road a deer ripened in death and a tuft of fur—or dandelion— tumbled along, gently circled, driftwood, shaking loose, gathered, dissolving into the mouths of jewelweed nearby Earth is rife with iron and blood is rich in stardust Immediately I spotted one hoof print, then nothing, as if this was where she dragged herself out of the body Strips of tire torn from their orbit Is it right then, that we are left to hurtle alone Find us at our website: www.closetalking.com/ Find us on Facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking  Find us on Twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking  Find us on Instagram: @closetalkingpoetry You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at [email protected].

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