Thu Anh Nguyen

Home Repair

I just really love when the air conditioning stops working,
or when a pipe has a visible leak somewhere magical and obvious
that doesn’t require holes in drywall or fumbling in attics.
Give me a problem that’s fixable, but not by me.

I know what to do: I will call a company who responds in their own time,
who sends out a man more competent than the ones I know,
who could also totally be scheming me, I know.

He disappears for a few minutes or hours into parts of my house
that I never go to, emerges satisfied with himself, smart enough to tell me
exactly what’s wrong while simultaneously making no sense whatsoever to me.
All I hear is that he can fix it, and he will fix it, and then he does fix it.

When he hands me the invoice, it doesn’t matter what it says
because I am grateful for his expertise, whatever the price, the sure way
he’s entered my life, and only after improving it, leaves.

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Thu Anh Nguyen is a Vietnamese American poet whose poetry has been featured in the Southern Humanities Review, The Crab Orchard Review, Cider Press Review, Zoetic Press’ Heathentide Orphans, NPR’s “Social Distance” poem for the community, The Salt River Review, and 3Elements. Her poem “Symbols Are Not Excuses” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net by the Southern Humanities Review. The author’s poems were named as a semi-finalist for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize for the Southern Humanities Review. She was honored with a writing residency with The Inner Loop Poetry Series in Washington, D.C.