1 poem
Archive Bereft of Words
Kept dreaming of losing my pilot light. Went to forest a fool for reading that haunted lighted
book.
I first pass a shroud, wisp of black thread story. Read cabindweller accounts
who drove and hummed along in agreement a hush. Surprise color at end of line. From
animal or what remain.
Kept hearing knots in festering night.
Tell me they kept record living come before and not remain.
Tell me they drank ferment together and sang holy melodies
into trees.
Want to keep each line and growth, each bone break and evolution, each fall away. In each
fold, each stomach. Each liver, each purge.
No books here because books. Every old white South carved mask into river in
protest.
Every
insect came to push water.
Books fill with lies. Printed pages repeat an incorrect strength. Every old white South hemmed
into room shoulder to shoulder
not withholding breath. Far safer to pass a line mouth to mouth.
Every stick came to knock unlit door.
You could keep a
syllable safe within tissues of
your body, to unearth when your body
deems it time for release.
One old white South push into mouth another old white South.
Each old white South presents a silver story plattered and obvious.
I do keep seeing your face, original language swallower. You make choice when old language
almost ran dry. Were we growing new mouth, new instrument proclaiming a book which is not a book?
Another smoky entrance we could only make out halfway in process of dissolving.
Pages made of leaf, compostable material to slice.
Another melt and congeal, temperature rising
falling in a steaming valley. So we never sure what day would hold, what smoke would
clang. Predictions often migrate unexpectedly. A throat of migrations
couldn’t save them. These softly touching pages.
We made a choice that we couldn’t keep them despite joy. We
quickly place them on tongue and devour them without trace.
Ink ran out story. Don’t forget, your ancestors melt down all natural
instincts.
Often unexpected migrations couldn’t predict any unusual entrances. Halfway, we rid ourselves
of any books. Safer to pass each line by mouth. No records except in memory and thread.
Your ancestors invent firecracker splash.
To pass each line in mouth, roast a full head of garlic bathed in oil.
Soft enough to melt, put your tongue whole and press.
Record in ridge of tongue, soft wall of throat.
Once you run out of ink, you bury the lead.
Today I listen for neighborly owl. I listen for knife and only hear a match.
Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American hybrid writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic and recombinant (winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry) as well as the chapbooks to make black paper sing and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (Finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award). Chen is also co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities. They are currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell. www.chinginchen.com