CATHERINE CHEN

BABY

i.

To build a girl
You must begin
In the afternoon

Dissolve yourself
Enter the rhizome:
Bathe, rest: then

Freefall into
Someone else’s
Lap or garden

Name her not that
She is yours
//She is now yours

Such language
Was never mine
To give or trust

I have myself
In so many ways
Told lies unto

ii.

I am listening to Shakira
And thinking of what, apart from emotional labor,
She invokes when she sings,
“I love you for free and I’m not your mother”
I listen to Shakira when I miss seeing my concave shadow on your skin

Leaning against the train door
Against a sign reading CAUTION DO NOT LEAN
I worry about every immaterial receipt I owe

Apparently this is strange
My friend Nathen doesn’t see the point
S – They’re proof
H – Of what?
S – My capital spending…me
H – That’s silly
It’s true
My finances are silly
These days I just wanna survive

A year ago I told a girl I loved badly
surviving is sexy

La Tortura (on repeat): I become desire
I look you in the eyes, beg you to come on me
I thought we were done

I’m sorry,
I don’t know what to do with my hands
I guess it’s a phase

I guess I’m conventional after all

Whatever //
It’s a windy day in Cambridge
My skirt flies up and I’m wearing blue panties
Walking it off is the elegant thing to do

I hate that word—panties
But no other word seems to quite
Capture the distress
Of gender
Wearing a black miniskirt and blue panties is a performance
Wearing hair and hidden agendas is a performance
Thinking about them is a performance
Call me a traitor
Write me a nasty email
Or better yet send money to my Paypal

Earlier today I thought to myself
“I will dilute and appropriate symbols of power”
By this I simply meant
I won’t go to school but will call myself a philosopher
My political career begins as I touch myself in the third bathroom stall
Approval ratings skyrocket when I eye fuck her across the train platform
To think, in another world, we could’ve had our own reality show
I transform: a flash of pink lightening: close & kind
At the bottom of this page I’ve left you a message
Please don’t read it

How it Feels

is my body soft enough
is my body enough
does it feel
like residue
how it feels changes every time i ask
how: shifts
feeling: shifts
this mutable life
beneath the surface
churns as I turn over to face the unyielding

how does it feel
how does the it makes you feel
phrasing matters to me
but it will not end state violence
syllables pass through a sieve
but they will not put food on the table
i know your body’s limits
more than i understand spinoza

tenderness:
we resist asking
how one fantasizes coping
when trauma sleeps
with the breeze and the clocks
i am moved toward sunlight
calling you,
expecting nothing

Catherine Chen is a poet and performer. Their work has appeared in Slate, The Rumpus, Apogee, Hobart, among others. They've been supported by fellowships and residencies from Poets House, Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), Lambda Literary, and Millay Colony. Their chapbook Manifesto, or: Hysteria (Big Lucks) is forthcoming in June.