My Father and My Mother Decide My Future, and How Could We Forget Wang Wei? (audio Only)
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More by Ken Chen
Brief Lives [excerpt]
Descartes in Love
Love, accepting that we are not pure and lucent hearts, ricocheting towards each other like unlatched stars—no, we are tainted with self. We sometimes believe the self is an invisible glass, just as we believe the body is a suit made of meat. Doubt all things invisible. Doubt all things visible.
Colin Powell
Not to be a tragic person. What is a tragic person? The victim of a crime who does not realize the criminal is himself.
Adonis Prettyboy in Hell And then her son with love-gun and a quiver snatched a love-shaft and delivered—a twiggy arrow in her nipple like a nasty sliver... A big pig stuck me with his tusk, but it's life that's the bore, silly! I never got desire, I always got what I wanted And in this hallway incredulous of lights, I want wild pears, firm booblike fruit—Daffodils! Clovers! And the trill of starlings why not! We could grow apples here... Apples? So, I suppose I do miss her —You know when I fell out of life I grabbed her heart like a rope;
Virginia Woolf
The target audience of my secrets is not my friends, but my journals and the strangers who will read them in the future.
Child of Immigrants
I used to pretend I was American.
This was until I realized I was American.
Richard Rorty
What is forgiveness? When someone else's sin becomes merely an action we ourselves might plausibly commit. The virtue of hypocrisy—we temporarily become people other than ourselves and can notice our actions from the other side, as saintly as no one.
Io Symbol is abridgement. I am not a cow and Argus not omniscience. We are clockfraught beings. The man I love stopped my heart when he froze the world to night. My heart being part of the world.
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.
Related Poems
45 I Give Up My Identity
My name is smaller than it sounds. I work & polish it until a light shines through. I thrust a thorn under my tongue. I drop the little stones behind me. Striding I can feel my height extend up to the rafters. My voice is thin, still thinner is the space between my footsteps & the earth. I do not want you calling me except at the allotted times. I scratch my head because I know it's empty. Hot & cold are equal terms. I give up my identity to write to you. The notice on the board says: Stay at home Be vigilant The aim of medicine is medicine. I can hardly wait until tomorrow. Signals everywhere are fraught with terror. In the deepest waters spread around the globe there is a sense of life so full no space exists outside it. I will go on writing till I drop & you can read my words beyond my caring.