after Feng Sun Chen
I. Asking the Wrong Questions
Forget//heal.
Dichotomy//progression.
A rift, whatever it is, is explosive
another big bang theory, but out of the explosion,
sort of something new. And not only is
it a something new, it is a something new
that can contain other something news.
I think of shark before I see it.
Explosion cemented into short.
What is real? what is made up? N asks.
What is literal, what is metaphor, I wonder.
The pain doesn’t want to disappear, it
wants to exist, like a parasite wants to continue.
There is some science going on here,
but empty space
scraping other empty spaces,
is something I sort of get.
The image of hanging blood. Maybe it will drop
and not continue hanging indefinitely.
Maybe it will hang indefinitely.
Becoming standing in for bleating, replacing
somebody with nobody, moving on to someday,
sometime, smoking, some some some.
Ending in densities, stars, moment, baby, coagulated, data.
II. Spectator Public Life
Your bangtrombonesloughdiva’s indifference laughing
“so pleasant when she’s pleasant”
there before half empty time bottoms out.
Virus dream austerity measures.
This is what its like to be triggered.
An inconvenience I should apologize for
that was like stomping on eggshells.
My trick that works that didn’t work
because I didn’t realize I needed to use
THAT trick. I didn’t realize I need to use
any truck. My telenovela a secret.
Plastic pink party drink party favor
discarded in the sink. Speaking in dialect
because we know each other’s dialect,
but we can’t speak the same tongue when
we both hate where we came from.
We just have to let it sit in the sun for a while.
The way you don’t dream for a while because
you don’t need to, then one day you need to.
The one part of the room I don’t sweep,
I just collect. You think I don’t know why you walk
with difficulty. Your heels in the ground
calling forth icons, canes, sunlight, nominations.
III. Peep Hole/Is Gwendolyn Scopophiliac?
She asked me to slither because my space
could not be had. I remember the thing I hated
that I forgot because I moved out of its way.
The opposite of the opposite of where I reside.
In the future, amoebas. I could do without bones.
The story of the coat. Each patchwork metaphor
for how it feels in this room right now. What
the ears in my love handles hear when you’re sleeping
in another bed. Ancient chloroformic cities’ tears
that grow things with wings and whistle through
wooden sea creature time’s hands’ luminosity
waiting in crossroads.The species we will be.
Predators of swarm. Geode pet made out of paper dolls.
Sock eggs in between my toes, scraping off, looking
at hairs I should’ve missed but didn’t take the time.
The furniture store’s proprietary Airdeale standing
in the doorway never making eye contact.
Even numbers’ bad luck, going under
the ladder anyway. What I didn’t do for my mother
that I now can’t do for my father because I didn’t
do it for my mother. All the games we played
that weren’t games, but story games. Dinosaur eggs.
Fossilization means you’re stuck, don’t like to be told
what to do. Give up on birth.
IV. Prevision Visage Voila
It’s life lent to the masses, fluxum, entireties in mud.
Fits of rage, a cold, lace rotted, lying face downward.
What I can do with these handcuffs, these crutches.
Perimenopausal spasms. If the sink is supposed
to be clogged. Entropy as a natural habitat.
The stereotype’s ideology’s infringement.
What I buy I throw away.
Push my shoulder down harder.
They always want to fall up.
Pedagogy of healing is laughing in naps.
Maggot therapy. Assimilation of the earthworm.
Lackadaisical Tenderloin walks.
Squinting futurity the bed is a savior.
Laughing all the way to the forest.
Adjective pronoun reference dysplasia.
Relative to what I meant to say. Refusing
cities until everyone joins you in a city
of city refusals.
V. Aspic Hypnos goads Lefèvre, the Garden of Olives,
mistral colonies
into countability. In one language
but not in another. The terror of over-steeped tea.
A solidity of absence that starts to forget
its body. An improved commonplace.
The names we give to duration.
Subunits that love their partiality
Abstractions portrayed as objects.
Reverse transubstantiation.
If this is a reading or a rereading.
The archive’s entropy.
Two is the loneliest number, but dice
leak turnips on the other side.
We can’t see what they are doing here.
When your depression flips over.
An unattended duplicity that sneaks
in, marries your house.
Love masks seeing
repression’s promise.