Come Clean [Paperback]

Joshua Nguyen's sharp, songlike, and often experimental collection compartmentalizes past traumasexual and generationalthrough the quotidian. Poems aim to confront the speaker's past by physically, and mentally, cleaning up. Here, the Asian-American masculine interrogates the domestic space through the sensual and finds healing through family and in everyday rhythms: rinsing rice until the water runs clear, folding clean shirts, and attempts at re-creating an unwritten family recipe. Yet past wounds remain present like permanent marker under layers of paint or spilled fish sauce set into car upholstery. Infused with the Shinto-inspired organizing practices of KonMari and the catchy nihilism of Mitski's songs, the poems inCome Cleanunpack, organize, and tidy up life's messy joys and hurtful chaos with intimacy, grace, and vulnerability.

No matter how smattered my insides,

I am relieved that I left my room tidy
One less ugly sight.

I always wanted to die clean & pretty
while my dreams made music in the night.

Excerpt from Last Words

Joshua Nguyen’s sharp, songlike, and often experimental collection explores the concept of compartmentalizing past trauma—sexual and generational—through the quotidian. Infused with the Shinto-inspired organizing practices of KonMari and the catchy nihilism of Mitski’s songs, the poems inCome Cleanunpack, organize, and tidy up life’s messy joys and hurtful chaos with intimacy, grace, and vulnerability.“I am so deeply moved by the subdued lyric force of this collection, if only subdued could capture the elegant control Nguyen exerts on his line. Sensuously constructed, inCome Cleanhe looks at the vast landscape of history through the desire for Marie Kondo’s order and a cure for imposter’s syndrome, in a book that’s as current as it is timeless.”—Carmen Giménez Smith"An unflinching look at how one l£#