Alief, Houston TX
I carry you through chinatown
on lunar new year’s eve—
softly the karaoke bars die
as hostess girls fly
to their nests. And
soju buddies stumble in a line
back to their sports cars
exhausted red and blue.
But I carry you—a k-pop song
sweet not loud or long,
we sit outside morii café
eating breeze chalked beignets.
Last sharetea run, the barista asks,
hey—what would you like—
and playfully I gave your name,
my you—my only you.
And though we should be
picking flower buds at temple
or praying inside a church—
we’re cruising through
the southwest streets
more lit than fireworks.
Võ Đức Quang is a bilingual poet born in Sài Gòn and raised in Houston, Texas whose poems has appeared in various publications, commissioned for the 2022 REELpoetry International Film Festival and the 2025 exhibition “Space for Us: Afrofuturism and the Poetic Imagination” (by Houston Poet Laureate Aris Kian Brown). He is director of the Houston nonprofit Public Poetry and can be found on instagram @vo_ducquang.
