Summary

"Telemachus" begins with the speaker pulling his father out of the ocean. The city they left behind has been destroyed, which forced them to flee by way of the ocean. The speaker asks his father, "Do you know who I am/ Ba?" but his father does not answer, because he has been shot in the back (7). The son flips his father's body over, and presses his mouth to his father's.

"Trojan" describes a man putting on a red dress and dancing in front of a mirror. Vuong uses the metaphor of the Trojan Horse to convey the man's future self-destruction. His body is filled with hidden soldier, who will destroy him just as they vanquished the city of Troy.

"Aubade With Burning City" takes place during the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, when North Vietnamese troops captured the city. The American and South Vietnamese...