from Houston in Compilation
15
in night with no memory, woman missing ear dries up on shore. yesterday, small knives hid in glimmer, melting where planted. dentist comes calling, opens all windows. over long and soundless night, chicken baked in moon, muttering man watching our progress. treasure here just slow-speaks its name clearly no reason for hurting with its tongue splayed open. we sent letters but reflections spit out anyway. the threading machine makes no effort even as growing stalk with no bounce. no reason to sit alone by staircase, prepping eyes for wideness.
Ching-In Chen is a genderqueer Chinese American hybrid writer, community organizer and teacher. They are author of The Heart's Traffic (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009); recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry); how to make black paper sing (speCt! Books, 2019); and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (forthcoming from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs and a Finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award). Chen is also the co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). They have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Can Serrat and Imagining America and are a part of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. They are currently Assistant Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.
