VALERIE HSIUNG

from YOU & ME FOREVER (the b-sides)

I was singing I was naked It was Saturday

Money yes Soul no

To have taken To have been took

You be the tree and I'll be the girl who loves you forever

'

Did you get my letter?

Did you get the box I gave them to give to you?

There's something to be said about searching through a crowd at the train platform to find no one, no one at all.

'

I washed up on the beach where I was walking, meeting myself as a cliche that was once so mesmerizing...

'

Now I know what my mother meant when she said

                                                                                                      I'm embarrassed for you.

                                                                                                      You should be ashamed
                                                                                                      of yourself.

Put some fucking pants on and get inside NOW.

'

Someone's trash is someone else's treasure

                                                    doesn't make you feel better
                                                    or see it any clearer.

I have chosen you as my secret admirer.

'

I feel close to you.

She's only a child, not even 10.

How can I make you feel closer?

He was 54 when he bought her and would be 56 by her wedding night.

Money and art, money and art, MONEY and ART. Is it bad that that's all that I want?

'

Yes, that was one of the pseudonyms I went by.

One of many. If you want something you should just ask sincerely.

Lady doesn't respond to torture. Hmm.

It's an ordinary day, I'm magical.

And it has become apparent that in order to preserve an ounce of my chance at survival in this zero-sum death-trap—what to you is dignity—that in order to see, I would have to risk nothing and be ok with a "probationary" period of whereby I would utterly lose, more losing than even Robin Williams' wife in What Dreams May Come (a common theme—the suicidal widow—for projector slide 888), only in this absolute suspension of near non-poignancy, in this suspension of a controlled deliquescent delinquency, would the vessel, the life-raft, finally find enough aplomb to commandeer us into the near unnecessarily new territory, into this non-tautologically arcane territory, into this non-final noemic.

It's an ordinary day, oh, I'm magic yeah. 

I'm magic here, now.
And tracing. 

Tracing proclivity. Kinetic because potential contains far less manure.

For an investigation of failure to land—

You see, here's a cup of my, my drinking cup which functions too as measuring cup,
so drinking cup and measuring cup alone in one.

It's an ordinary day, ordinary day that I'm magic. When, when in all of my failures have I returned ever to
the same event, I haven't, the same life cycle, never, never have I ever even come close to doing such a
thing, I haven't, I haven't done anything as crazy as have a baby yet. 

In my secret wilderness, I have kept a sample-sized perfume of us in the air valve of a song, a dangerous doo wop you might predict, abolishment of dogwhistle and dog calls and dog collars, accomplices to solitude. And I have plugged up our songs into the speaker system notary republic which of course was always going in and out in and out, of us, of space, of time, ours too, but less predictably or perhaps more obviously to someone not overly taken to the sensitivities of a senior dog shelter, of the channel between a
dog and a girl who has or will have had been raped... I miss you, too, family, home, place.

These days I bring the porto-potty into our bedroom, enhance the definition of a finite pixelation. Look
my skin talks
to me, a thing no singer dangerer can deploy, it talks to me dirty. Upon my god, this old heart ache,
romance. Plus, I'm not sure what else injustice fears if not actually the instilling of actual freedom
into a single body, alone, in one, erased, and so, as such, erasing itself, the (en)trails to and of our broken harnesses. Even then, though, quotes...

Your girl. It's an— and I'm—
I was born on the day you died. Or, or vice versa.
When in fact their abandonment (or of or for singers/songstresses) is entirely reactionary... when in fact
their proclivity for adventure is situated graphically to the + 1 888 number that has called me every day
for the past ten years.

from YOU & ME FOREVER

                                             ' '

If you have to ask, then you don't remember

A lock of her hair that disappeared  

If you don't remember, then you never cared

No telling what a man like that could do...  

A trolley skips over the outline of each box on the pavement

And then we follow the woman's scent  

Do you really think that that's your prerogative that that is anyone's prerogative

Except her own  

Do you really think people should be allowed to escape justice

You know, child,

When I was little, I didn't think that this is what I would have dedicated my life to

Yet... as I've seen the ugliness of the world, the ugliness of this humanity    

You end up doing things you never thought you would have done  

You end up doing things you never thought you could do

 

We cleaned up our act

Together

Wasn't planning on it but for you

                                                               Anything

 

 

 (HOLD FOR THIRTY SECONDS OR MORE TO RESET)

Postscript / so you're my chinatown now

And it appears as though a field trip's taking place. That's the trifle, right?

The origin pushed between the legs in the desert. Pushed through to have birthed an entire classroom.

Never say
the desert
again.

Scratch on your face

Denote denote

It's a private act but opens, opens up to the sky.

At the same time. Lizard, lizard. The word chandelier has a completely new meaning for me now.

Read all the books, children!

I, too, understood wanting nothing and to leave forever...

And then, she was sewn shut.

At the same time. Oh oh children. Oh children

Tell me what you notice about the shape of the walls. Oh oh, oh children

She tells the little girl that she has a gift. And that is to bear the weight of it all

And the world could run through her body, her life, like beautiful water

All her stolen pens drugs stashed stuffed in a trunk like guns She dampens a motel towel and wipes away blood with a petrified grip from the stomach. All that I am

And we are capable of inflicting, recognizing, root. Getting a drink at the vending machine when what you hear sounds like bubble wrap or confetti all at once like happiness

I'm so glad we washed up in the same city, what were the chances, in almost the exact same place, what were the odds.

You know it's funny...

So lay here a little then, before we all leave again, before the train comes, for the—

It'll never change the fact that this is true to me, forever, you—

And where'll you get off?

Somewhere... Far...

Don't worry about me, ok? Stay out of trouble ok?

When I think about all the ways you could have gone

And then.

I think about how it all went down.

I don't feel bad about it at all

Five days later.

Ten actually.

Almost everyone I've talked to has been simply defeated, some are terrified but everyone is utterly defeated. I saw a line of houses on a street, everyone closed their eyes. And then turned into their doors...

Now leave me alone

I did it, now leave me a lone.

It's funny, because it's obvious what she would do for the(m)—

All the closed docks she'd walk down.

I did everything you guys asked me to do, now I'm fucking done!

Don't come to my house ever again, you come to my house again and I will fucking kill you

Write of the pine needle like the Chinese

In another language. In your language. In another language. In your language. In another language. In ours.

The pines, pine

            threads

      their voices and their bodies

But you want to make sure you

stay

Stay out of trouble

In another body. In your body. In another body. In your body. In another body. In ours.

Giddy up,

                  giddy up, Moses, it's all

Down

              downhill from here

from outside voices, please

I stopped tokening at myself about two years ago

I blew that vase into a balloon

and then I stopped looking at myself completely

I texted you to tell you I was going to keep on this journey anyway that we'd begun together and then realized it wasn't your number anymore

Stop being fake w its me the tree cried out but
I have no other choice she replied and besides what does a homespun trumpet hanging as a sign of goodwill to welcome the foster on the doormat have anything to do with goodwill or what you think I have been through

Shake up your trap then

unless you are the second class you created

Sick poverty give it to the man and get away from your own sedate destruction
You can host many parties
for the attackee cells and the auto derangers in the garage but
come back to me girl

is a mandate from a previous life you asked who hurt you
in a previous life what do you think you were owed
in a previous life what did you do in a past life girl

Or what do you think was done to you These are your uh huh and your uh oh tokens

you'd think I'd be the woman The woman who loves animals

is because animals love me The woman who loves the animals who can whisper

network to them is the one who will scream We all keep these chants within but the

buildup of chants actually contains the buildup itself so it's not that I've ever

held onto anything but I think I'm still that same freak

Valerie Hsiung is the author of three full-length poetry collections, the latest of which is her e f g (Action Books). Individual poems can be found in or are forthcoming from The Nation, The Believer, Chicago Review, Flapperhouse, TAGVVERK, jubilat, So & So Magazine, glitterMOB, Tammy, Denver Quarterly, Sonora Review, Pinwheel, PEN Poetry Series, Bayou Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, No Dear Magazine, and beyond. She has performed her little poetry theater at Treefort Music Festival, DC Arts Center, Casa Libre en la Solana, Poetic Research Bureau, Rhizome, Shapeshifter Lab, and The Silent Barn. Born and raised by Chinese-Taiwanese immigrants in southern Ohio, Hsiung is nowadays based out of New York.