Michelle Phương Hồ is the author of Bone Symphony, forthcoming from BOA Editions in Fall 2026.
Her work appears in Nat Brut, the Offing, Poetry, Volume, and elsewhere. Her honors include a Friends of Literature Award from Poetry, a Connecticut Artistic Excellence Award, a BRINK Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing, a Ninth Letter Literary Award in Poetry, and a Frontier Poetry Industry Prize. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU.
Born to Vietnamese refugees in San Jose, CA, she lives in New Haven, CT, where she teaches poetry in university classrooms, community bookspaces, and living rooms.
from “Bone Symphony”
Poetry Magazine, May 2025
Making my way home
is the only ritual I know.
Making a small pile
of my dead on the windowsill
I cup my hands against
the glass like
children do, blowing hot air
into the skeletal frames.
Each prisoner’s singing
so clear
inside the funeral, I stood
with them
a tiny flame