Two Poems
by Michael Chang
DRAKKAR NOIR
“and what i want to know is / how do you like your blue-eyed boy / Mister Death” — e. e. cummings
, take a look around. Last I heard, the world kept coming. My debt makes it too
expensive to . The police are the public & the public are the police. My doesn’t
know has never been so easy. Under penalty of law, I’ve been taking my loneliness as
Fatty feral children
Good clothes but hideously self-hating
Baffled by the question abt occasional poems
Occasion as in special event
Not once-in-a-blue-moon
Yes, I suppose I do write the occasional poem, I said
What’s it to you?
I used to find the concept of rereading a book so foreign
Alien almost
I’ve started doing it, & not even for books I particularly like
I wonder if this means I am old & white now
I’ve been thinking abt my book cover,
how advised it would be to use the color scheme of a failed airline,
if an aircraft crashing & burning would taint my book
Taint as in the narrow strip between genitals & asshole
I read somewhere that our taste buds dull as we age
I remember watching the aging French actor
staring as he wolfed down steak tartare & freedom fries
wrinkly & disgusting
Later in life I find myself ordering steak tartare as a treat
My dulled taste buds wanting that sinewy rawness
The hot sting of fries burning the fuck outta my mouth
The seared roof tender but quick-healing
Look how careful, how sensible I am
Like a draft dodger or DIET MOUNTAIN DEW
I laugh abt the period of Australian political turbulence
where they had so many changes in government
It was no longer reliable to ask a wakening patient
Who is the Prime Minister?
For a week I’ve done nothing but recite TLC lyrics
Don’t go chasing waterfalls . . .
I took a job b/c I liked a boy
He quit the next day
Meaning he quit me
So I promoted myself
Uncoordinated like octopus
Let’s go all the way / tonite
Baraka said “never let Mr. Chan send you into a dark room by yourself”
I think he meant Detective Charlie Chan
In any case, it’s pretty good advice
Prophet to profit
Dawn to dusk
. . .
NOBODY’S EYES BUT MINE
“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” — Ani DiFranco
“We end in joy” — Theodore Roethke
Trickster feminism & truffle butter
You keep saying the city is big & scary
Are you imagining life with me
You like safe & comfortable
You greenhouse little flower
I don’t have a clothes chair
I have clothes couch & clothes floor
Stop making me break all the rules for you
Be my impenetrable KITT
Don’t poke the bull if you don’t want the horns
Be like a foal, birthed & ready to go
I’m feeling you up like the men & the elephant
A happiness when I eat you
Our state bird is murder
My language hurrying to keep up
If sorry is the hardest word
Where does that leave scat
CNF is lies
Poetry is lies
Gender is lies
I am bubble tea
Suck my balls
A Lambda Literary fellow, Michael Chang (they/them) was awarded the Kundiman Scholarship at the Miami Writers Institute. A finalist in contests at the Iowa Review, BOMB, NightBlock, & many others, their poems have been nominated for Best of the Net. Their manuscript "big shot manifesto" was selected by Rae Armantrout as a finalist for the Fonograf Editions Open Genre Book Prize, & another was a finalist in the Diode Editions Book Contest.
