skype conversation
skype conversation where you say
sad pressed face then sadfacepress.com
and i feel like laughing because you are
good at words and i like people who are good at words
but i had to write down all the things i wanted to say but
could not say, or worse was not allowed to say and
hence will not say since the ex that
appears in the splitting of one body into two people
is a boundary that i should not cross
what if lines are meant to be broken brea-
king of lines i watched this line break in
defiance of everything you say i shouldn’t say
three strikes, third month, will i see you
with your top down return to lost arms
eyes closing now open you are here reaching
you say no no i know but your hands say yes
defying the line of unfamiliarity cross it, cross it
till then i wait with my ghost lover
word vomit with spacing
this doesn’t even want to be love:
take a poor lover with an excuse
or make a lover, poor, full of excuses
love-making, making up my lovers
these lovers making me up across the excuses
i am made up of lovers, excuses
you are a poor excuse for a lover or
( final blame, myself ) a poor excuse for taking a lover
1992 boy
pulse quickens
peel off your clothes
eye-fucking across the classroom
says to me someone gave me this shirt you can’t keep it
says to me objects belong objectified, i belong to you
i can be anything you want i am part-morphine
i can be useful just let me dress you up in my dreams
untitled
sometimes parts of my body betray me
in a room with music on, a good song
and my face
flushing, red, for one reason
and i find myself reaching for the
top shelf, tipping coolness into a cup
waiting for a feeling that precedes me
and the night is long and cold even with
all the windows shut, long and cold even
with my eyes shut. the end of the maze
is where it begins, in the cup, i should
have cut straight through to
the cooling that saves
what i wanted and denied
myself. only otherwise. you should
have read me poems aloud. but then:
didn’t i return
to it in the end
if he was still alive
i’d ask him to read me
but by trapping my thoughts
mid-flight in language, i can say
that no one has reached
my heart
an explanation for dislocation
i know now where i am, and because time is a smattering of pigeons flowing out of line, i have become accustomed to living in the space between the eyes. clouds stagger the perception, i hear a voice and forget that i once knew its name. i forget and live here. i circle these around myself. the past and the future are two points fluid and moving forward, non-existent in other minds except my own. the east swings me nestled in the void to the west so in the present time and when i am having coffee with you i am not here, and when my mother is asking me whether i would like white bedsheets i am not here, and when i walk with you down the escalator and see you standing there and you think you see me and know me and i stare at you my eyes pooling out dripping time and the present i am not here
Profile: Natalie Chin
