Smell of Rain or Poem of M.

by hoang hung

i was thinking of this poem two weeks ago and tore my house apart looking for it. there were papers everywhere, piles. (my roommate hates when that happens. the pile-making is avery unfortunate alanna thing.) i had insomnia, i didn't sleep, i was texting poetry friends from back in the day and asking them to rack their brains, given only an impressionistic description of this poem, which i haven't read since 2003. i think it was raining the night i went digging through all my papers, and i was miserably crushed-out. the next day i scheduled a trip to michigan, in large part so i could access the boxes of books that i have in storage.


now i have it. here it is. something so precious and rare, on a single piece of paper. given the lines i remembered, what i could recall about the poet, his imprisonment, i could not find it on the internet, through i racked my brain and returned to google with new words, day after day. the first time i heard it, a teaching guest of kevin coval had brought it to word wide, in the basement of the chopin theater. i do not remember the writing prompt that followed it, because i was so floored by the rawness and clarity of the lines. the gratitude that can hardly be felt in the memory of such despair.


the urgency that i felt, looking for this piece of paper, makes me realize how essential poetry is to me. songs disappear when they fall out of favor, and poems have no popular hold, compared to something singable. but i could not reconstruct this, could not convey this feeling. it is a poem with cow dung, cement floors, metal roofs, and rain -- it is not fancy and the speaker is anxiously insecure in his love.


reading this, i think about the terrors of prison, of exile, of the limits to our knowledge and understanding. this could be a poem about orpheus and eurydice. it is a poem about ineffability and "the odor of tears."