Cruel Cogito
How joyous!, passing this time alone with your father, how bright his golden laugh which drew you to laugh yourself uncontrolled, how sweet the happy hour oysters you two pry and eat, piling wobbling shells that glisten on the table while the pianist plays by the kitchen doors. You find yourself reminded of what you wrote in the eulogy: that you two would still possess a relationship even though he was dead, that you could still go and speak with him when you dreamed and so you see the seat opposite from you seats no one.
Copyright © 2013 by Ken Chen. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on October 21, 2013.
"This is an early scene from a book-length manuscript called The Death Star, concerning the death of the author's father. The manuscript explores the idea of death as a form of immigration--and re-imagines the underworld not as a metaphysical idea but as a spatial location and Tristan not as an epic lover but as a fallible interpreter for asylum cases to the underworld. Many of the poems focus on the apocalypse (as well as its opposite, cosmogony), with a hint of hysterical science fiction and magical kitsch, and a special emphasis on that most apocalyptic historical moment: imperialism."
—Ken Chen
Ken Chen
Ken Chen earned a BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and a JD from Yale University.
Chen is the author of Juvenilia (Yale University Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Yale Younger Poets Award selected by Louise Glück. Additionally, he has published work in numerous journals and online archives, including Poetry and the Boston Review of Books.