Eric Tran is a queer Vietnamese poet and the author of Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke (Diode Editions 2022) and The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer (Autumn House Press). His poetry has been featured in All Things Considered, Poetry Daily, and Best of the Net, among other publications. He is completing his fellowship in Addiction Psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, OR.

Books by Eric Tran:

Other poems on the web by Eric Tran:
Two poems
"Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)"
"Call the Mouth"
Four poems
Two poems
"Angier, NC"
Two poems
"Self-Portrait in the Weeks After"
"Scenes"
"Poem Starting with Underwear and Ending with Ghost"

Eric Tran's Website.

Eric Tran on Twitter.

About Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke:

"Wounds, here, are not ornamental. Tenderness, here, is as restless and resilient as pain. The poems refuse transformation, superficial resolutions. Instead, the language—unsparing, striking—attends to addiction and death with grace, awe. The emotional complexity is mirrored structurally: the lines waterfall and halt, a sonnet crown jolts awake the mind, sentences simmer with lyrical momentum. Eric Tran's second book is heart-rich and deftly written—the poems will stay with you long after you finish reading it."
—Eduardo C. Corral

"'I resent no one / the instinct to run' writes Eric Tran in his brave and beautiful Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke. But this is a poet who never runs. In fact, he pushes deep into the raw center of desire, admitting 'I've wanted your picked-at / scab, your broken voice through a / morning-night call.' This is a book of lust and brokenness, of 'suffering as hot / and clean as a pistol's mouth.' Whether attending an autopsy as part of his profession, or taking care of a friend in a room of '[u]sed needles / like a fist / of Pixy Stix,' this is a speaker who never turns away. This is a poet who brings 'scalpel / baring down onto bone.'"
—Aaron Smith