Chen Chen

Big smelly bowel movements this blue January morning. From the living room TV, a commercial from our TV company:We’re the fastest, the only — Meaning,Love us above all others. What makes poop more pungent on certain days? A question for science. From the living room TV: the powerful cite Law, bark Order— Meaning,Love us or else. Years ago, a teacher said never to use the word “poop” in a poem. Today, the icy kiss of the toilet seat wakes me up. Today, I poop while my boyfriend shouts from the living room,Did you hear that, meaning the atomic scientists who say we are now two & a half minutes to midnight. But still I marvel whenever poop comes out as one true Platonic tube. I am trying to be marvelous. & to make my enemies throw up. I mean, if you shower with soap & eat well, maintaining consistent gastrointestinal health, you should be ready for a rimjob or other forms of anal play. My boyfriend & I are not platonic. From the TV: a white supremacist cites Science, barks Two sides to every — I mean, up the throat, out the mouth: the fastest, the only way the powerful will let go of their shit. I mean, my boyfriend & I are not into scat but if you are I hope your beloved produces the most fragrant, citrusy shit. I mean, is “shit” more or less literary than “poop”? I mean, one winter night I got sick & pooped the bed. & he just got up with me. Helped strip the sheets, carry it all to the washer. I kept saying,I’m so sorry, shivering,I’m so, I’m sorry. But he said,What? Hey. I love you.

To be a good ex/current friend for R. To be one last inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship advice for L. To be advice for my mother. To be a more comfortable hospital bed for my mother. To be no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time, America for my uncle, who wants to be China for me. To be a country of trafficless roads & a sports car for my aunt, who likes to go fast. To be a cyclone of laughter when my parents say their new coworker is like that, they can tell because he wears pink socks, see, you don’t, so you can’t, can’t be one of them. To be the one my parents raised me to be— a season from the planet of planet-sized storms. To be a backpack of PB&J & every thing I know, for my brothers, who are becoming their own storms. To be, for me, nobody, homebody, body in bed watching TV. To go 2D & be a painting, an amateur’s hilltop & stars, simple decoration for the new apartment with you. To be close, J., to everything that is close to you— blue blanket, red cup, green shoes with pink laces. To be the blue & the red. The green, the hot pink.

Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango. As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront. Realizing I hate the word “sip.” But that’s all I do. I drink. So slowly. & say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid. I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic. Come able & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter. I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be. I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers. She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble. They will be better than mangoes, my brothers. Though I have trouble imagining what that could be. Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.

Oh. Sorry. Hello. Are you on your way to work, too? I was just taken aback by how you also have a briefcase, also small & brown. I was taken by how you seem, secretly, to love everything. Are you my new coworker? Oh. I see. No. Still, good to meet you. I’m trying out this thing where it’s good to meet people. Maybe, beyond briefcases, we have some things in common. I like jelly beans. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of farting, even around people I love. Do you think your mother loves you when you fart? Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted? I like that the street we’re on is named after a tree, when there are none, poplar or otherwise. I wonder if a tree has ever been named after a street, whether that worked out. If I were a street, I hope I’d get a good name, not Main or One-Way. One night I ran out of an apartment, down North Pleasant Street — it was soft & neighborly with pines & oaks, it felt too hopeful, after what happened. After my mother’s love became doubtful. After I told her I liked a boy & she wished I had never been born. After she said she was afraid of me, terrified I might infect my brothers with my abnormality. Sometimes, parents & children become the most common strangers. Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again. Or not. I’ve doubted my own love for my mother. I doubt. Do I have to forgive in order to love? Or do I have to love for forgiveness to even be possible? What do you think? I’m trying out this thing where questions about love & forgiveness are a form of work I’d rather not do alone. I’m trying to say, Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, & continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.

Can’t stop eating you, movie-style extra butter microwave popcorn. Can’t stop watching you, rented movie about an immigrant family from Lebanon. Can't help but weep, seeing the family wave goodbye to relatives in the Beirut airport—tear salt mixing with popcorn salt. Can’t hide my mess, myself from the friend beside me. Can’t answer his question,Does it remind you of your family, leaving China? I want to say,No, it’s completely different, which in many ways it is, but really I’m remembering what a writer friend once said to me,All you write about is being gay or Chinese—how I can’t get over that, & wonder if it’s true, if everything I write is in some way an immigrant narrative or another coming out story. I recall a recent poem, featuring fishmongers in Seattle, & that makes me happy—clearly that one isn’t about being gay or Chinese. But then I remember a significant number of Chinese immigrants live in Seattle & how I found several of the Pike Place fishmongers attractive when I visited, so I guess that poem's about being gay & Chinese, too. So I say to my friend,I'm not sure,& keep eating the popcorn. Thank god we chose the giant “family size” bag. Can’t stop the greasy handfuls, noisy mouthfuls. Can’t eat popcorn quietly. Later, during my friend’s smoke break, still can’t come up with a worthy response to his radical queer critique of homonormativity, of monogamy, domesticity, front lawn glory.These middle-class gays picking out garden gnomes, ignoring all the anti-racist work of decolonization that still needs to be done—don’t you think they’re lame? I say,Yeah, for sure, but think, marriage, house, 1 kid, 2 cats—how long have I wanted that? Could I give that up in the name of being a real queer? Probably can’t. & it’s like another bad habit I can’t give up. Eating junk, can’t. Procrastinating, can’t. Picking scabs, can’t. Being friends with people who challenge my beliefs & life plans, can’t. Reading & believing in Ayn Rand, though? Can, Brief phase as a Christian because I liked the cross as an accessory? Can. WWJD? Can. White heterosexist patriarchy? Can. America . . . can’t. Can’t help but think, when we get back to the movie, how it was my father’s decision to move here, not my mother’s, just like the parents on screen. Can’t stop replaying my mother’s walk onto the plane, carrying me, though I was getting too old for it, holding me, my face pressed into her hair, her neck, as she cried, quietly—can’t stop returning to this scene of leaving, can’t stop pausing the scene, thinking I’ve left something out again, something else my mother told me. Like my grandmother at the airport, how she saw my small body so tied to my mother’s body, & still she doubted, she had to say,You better not lose him.& my mother kept that promise till she couldn’t, she lost me, in the new country, but doesn’t that happen to all parents & their children, one way or another, & don’t we need to get lost? Lost, dizzy, stubbly, warm, stumbling, whoa—that’s what it felt like, 17, kissing a boy for the first time. Can’t forget it. Can’t forget when my mother found out & said, This would never have happened if we hadn’t come to this country. But it would’ve happened, every bit as dizzy, lost, back in China. It didn’t happen because of America, dirty Americans. It was me, my need. My father said,You have to change, but I couldn’t, can’t give you up, boys & heat, scruff & sweet. Can’t get over you. Trying to get over what my writer friend said,All you write about is being gay or Chinese. Wish I had thought to say to him,All you write about is being white or an asshole. Wish I had said,No, I already write about everything— & everything is salt, noise, struggle, hair, carrying, kisses, leaving, myth, popcorn, mothers, bad habits, questions.

My mother was in the hospital & everyone wanted to be my friend. But I was busy making a list: good dog, bad citizen, short skeleton, tall mocha. Typical Tuesday. My mother was in the hospital & no one wanted to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be soft cooing sympathies. Very reasonable pigeons. No one had the tie & our solution to it was to buy shinier watches. We were enamored with what our wrists could declare. My mother was in the hospital & I didn’t want to be her friend. Typical son. Tall latte, short tale, bad plot, great wifi in the atypical café. My mother was in the hospital & she didn’’t want to be her friend. She wanted to be the family grocery list. Low-fat yogurt, firm tofu. She didn’t trust my father to be it.You always forget something, she said,even when I do the list for you. Even then.

God sent an angel. One of his least qualified, though. Fluent only in Lemme get back to you. The angel sounded like me, early twenties, unpaid interning. Proficient in fetching coffee, sending super vague emails. It got so bad God personally had to speak to me. This was annoying because 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. God did not listen to me. God is not a good listener. I said Stop it please, I’ll give you wedding cake, money, candy, marijuana. Go talk to married people, politicians, children, reality TV stars. I’ll even set up a booth for you, then everyone who wants to talk to you can do so without the stuffy house of worship, the stuffier middlemen, & the football blimps that accidentally intercept prayers on their way to heaven. I’ll keep the booth decorations simple but attractive: stickers of angels & cats, because I’m not religious but didn’t people worship cats? Thing is, God couldn’t take a hint. My doctor said to eat an apple every day. My best friend said to stop sleeping with guys with messiah complexes. My mother said she is pretty sure she had sex with my father so I can’t be some new Asian Jesus. I tried to enrage God by saying things like When I asked my mother about you, she was in the middle of making dinner so she just said Too busy. I tried to confuse God by saying I am a made-up dinosaur & a real dinosaur & who knows maybe I love you, but then God ended up relating to me. God said I am a good dinosaur but also sort of evil & sometimes loving no one. It rained & we stayed inside. Played a few rounds of backgammon. We used our indoor voices. It got so quiet I asked God about the afterlife. Its existence, human continued existence. He said Oh. That. Then sent his angel again. Who said Ummmmmmm. I never heard from God or his rookie angel after that. I miss them. Like creatures I made up or found in a book, then got to know a bit.