When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

by Chen Chen

poetry is the place where the sacred is reached through the profane,

Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.

I’m not a religious person. I thought I’d made this clear to God by reading Harry Potter & not attending church except for gay weddings.

What it’s time for is a garden. Or a croissant factory.

Why did I never consider how different spring could smell, feel, elsewhere?

Like all scholars in any sort of heaven, I will study the metaphysics of madness.

On Earth lately, I’ve been looking at everyone like I love them, & maybe I do. Or maybe I only love one person, & I’m beaming from it. Or actually I just love myself, & I want people to know.

I’m thinking of Ginsberg’s letters to friends & lovers, how once I read a small hill of them in the library & some were poems & some were prayers, cries, ejaculate, & now all I remember is I love you I love you, & how long would it take to read all the world’s letters, sent (& unsent), every I love you (I love you),

Every day I am asked to care about white people,

I’m envious of the clouds who can from time to time fall completely apart & everyone just says, It’s raining, & someone might even bring cats & dogs into it, no one says, Stop being so dramatic or You should see a professional.

But must we really go, on this hellishly cold winter’s night, to your coworker’s going-away, in a tiny downtown bar where all must jostle for a spot, & nothing good is ever played on the jukebox? OK, OK. With great humanitarian effort, I too put on my heavy coat, ready to step out.

actually I hate how words get outdated or we outgrow them, & think you do, too, saying things like “poochie” & “good gravy,” & maybe that’s why I call you sweetie pie & you call me sweet baby, & how can we make things stay?

I thought I could tell this story, give it a way out of itself.

Spring says it & fall are retracting their contractual smells & birds, their unlimited catalogue of liminal spaces.

The rain falls on & off in the western city. The train slips in & out of tunnels throughout the city. The reader falls endlessly into her book.