Full Description
In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family - the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes - all from Asian American, immigrant and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this refreshingly candid and entertainingly provocative collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life and love. Foreword by Jericho Brown.
Contents
Foreword by Jericho Brown
Self-Portrait as So Much Potential
1
I'm not a religious person but In the Hospital
Summer Was Forever
Race to the Tree
West of Schenectady
Self-Portrait With & Without
First Light
How I Became Sagacious
Elegy
Please take off your shoes before entering do not disturb
2
Song with a Lyric from Allen Ginsberg
Talented Human Beings
To the Guanacos at the Syracuse Zoo
Elegy for My Sadness
Ode to My Envy
Irreducible Sociality
Antarctica
Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon
In the City
The Cuckoo Cry
Didier et Zizou
Kafka's Axe & Michael's Vest
Poem
In Search of the Least Abandoned Constellation
If I should die tomorrow, please note that I will miss the particular
Frog-Hopping Gravestones
Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime
3
for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me
In This Economy
Night falls like a button
Things Stuck in Other Things Where They Don't Belong
Song of the Night's Gift
Chapter VIII 68 Nature Poem
When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey
babel & juice
Song of the Anti-Sisyphus
Talking to God About Heaven from the Bed of a Heathen
Elegy to Be Exhaled at Dusk Spell to Find Family
Little Song
Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls
Poplar Street
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
