1.<\/p>\n
You said, time Maybe it all just shifts, slips When I asked, they told me hunger, But isn\u2019t it a long time, 2.<\/p>\n Jack, I guess it\u2019s just us two Eurydices His voice is blooming & his song says winter & his song goes:<\/p>\n under the flower of light, I saw time I came to know & recommend So let me say: fuck Orpheus<\/em>. This is no place for bravery.What good is that Are there junipers, here, 3.<\/p>\n In the distance are the doors, the empty shelves 4.<\/p>\n Then, clearer than day comes the image of Judas, alone where I played as a boy hoping always not to be like Judas I did not understand<\/p>\n 5.<\/p>\n I thought of you as a butterfly tonight with clipped wings<\/em> between us\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0but that to come to it correspondence\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Jack\u2014to have called you by your first the implacable process of communication but aren\u2019t we all just looking for light where I have felt so small<\/p>\n driven by doubt & a celebration but I love chocolate & coffee someone I love told me to write a poetry that uses all I don\u2019t know if losing myself in another is good I don\u2019t know if what is beautiful is beautiful I\u2019m making coffee now\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the work is long Kenneth Yuen<\/strong> is a trans writer from Seattle, they received their MFA from Cornell University. Their poetry has appeared in TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics, The Seattle Review,<\/em> and Winter Anthology.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1. You said, time does not finish a poem\u2014& it doesn\u2019t. Maybe nothing does. Maybe a poem is longer than your nephew\u2019s hat. Maybe it\u2019s hot as the coffee of god, or the cigarettes in Zion where the ash falls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9926],"tags":[22248],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ndoes not finish a poem<\/em>\u2014& it doesn\u2019t. Maybe nothing
\ndoes. Maybe a poem is longer
\nthan your nephew\u2019s hat. Maybe it\u2019s hot
\nas the coffee of god, or the cigarettes
\nin Zion where the ash falls
\nlike I do from the lips of someone speaking smoke.<\/p>\n
\nthrough this or that & finds
\nits continuing where it can.
\nThe boy in the poem is resourceful.
\nHe categorizes, makes
\nlists, marks long & short \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0& run
\nalong now \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0he makes sense where he can.
\nBut a person is not a poem
\n& people don\u2019t finish
\npoems either. I haven\u2019t learned what does.<\/p>\n
\nfear, abandonment, exuberance & joy
\nall finish poems. But I don\u2019t know
\nI just see words & movement
\ncast in shapes through pages & through time.<\/p>\n
\nisn\u2019t it forever, since you\u2019ve been around.
\nIn another world, I could have known
\nyou, but I know your poems only. How you
\nfinished them, how they finished
\nthemselves or finished you\u2014does it matter
\nif I never know? Here, under the juniper,
\nmy alcoholic, my psychotic muse
\nhas a thing for you.<\/p>\n
\nleft under the juniper.
\nWon\u2019t somebody carry
\nus out of hell, already? Won\u2019t you sing to me?
\nHere\u2019s my liver, all in palm;
\nmy voice & body, up for Orpheus\u2019s song.<\/p>\n
\nin the rising tide<\/p>\n
\n& his song says yes<\/p>\n
\n& under the flower of light, I bless\u2019d time
\n& under the flower the flower of light<\/p>\n
\nthis life<\/p>\n
\nIn that there is some consolation.
\nIt\u2019s all just fear, Jack.
\nAren\u2019t we all
\nEurydice, hating the lyre & the words
\nnot the glance that takes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Orpheus away again
\ntoward the world that meant
\nhe could never be
\nours, that we could never live,
\nnever taste time\u2019s slice and pretend
\nthat something has finality\u2014
\nbut hating always the words time
\ndoes not finish a poem<\/em> and I am afraid<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\nwhen there is nowhere worse to go?
\nLet us go down restless to the asphodel beds
\nthose vast, white, breezeless
\nfields at the edge
\ntogether so that we may lay forgetting,
\nforever asking of anything at all, here,<\/p>\n
\nin hell?<\/p>\n
\nmade from bright roots,the only
\nremnants of that tree
\nwhere we stand & keep;
\n& keep & write.
\nIt\u2019s winter now, the birds
\nare not in flight any longer, only the snow flurries
\nfly. You believed a holiday
\nwas like a snowstorm
\n& that people ought to notice it. The juniper is just
\nthe juniper. My mind\u2019s bent in
\ntoward sacred things, because
\nit was taught to seek
\nfor sacred things. I never really knew
\nif I could love a man.
\nFive years, Jack
\n& I had never heard
\nof you. Five years were not
\na tunnel to another time,
\nwere not the fallen fireman, relit
\ninto a blossomed light.
\nFive years were three
\nsuicides & no deaths & several
\nnew voices saying: where
\nare the birds & gods, in brilliant
\nreds, blacks, blues of hideous flight.
\nWe tunnel empty words through arid time
\nthey said\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0& look about to pull.
\nAnother month I come like stars unbounded
\nradiating light in particles
\n& waves. My history is wider than
\nits order & its lines. Five years now
\nI look for you, but only here I\u2019m pulling off
\nmy February face.<\/p>\n
\nthan the white disk of the sun
\nthan the black robes of salvation
\nof churches or judges
\nor all the image of children kneeling
\nto worship in church house pews
\nfor sins they do not understand<\/p>\n
\nin a dry field not much
\ndifferent from the elementary school
\nwhere I grew up, running
\nhis hand through the loops
\nof his hair, running
\nhis hands down
\nthe long eternal slide<\/p>\n
\nwhere the metal was too hot in the sun
\n& where I held to the edges, hoping
\nnot to fall off
\nhoping to fall fast
\nfor some kind of thrill
\nall the time scared & hoping
\nsomething I didn\u2019t understand
\nand didn\u2019t want to<\/p>\n
\nrunning his hands through
\nthe last loops of his rope
\nrunning his hands upward
\nagainst a hope<\/p>\n
\nyour monarch colors spelled
\na hole left where I want to speak
\nI can\u2019t tell you\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0that I love you
\nthat I don\u2019t know what love would be<\/p>\n
\nin a single light
\nto forge a false<\/p>\n
\nname all this time\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0to have reduced\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0to a figure<\/p>\n
\nunder the hill of our bodies
\nunder the foolishness & desire of bodies
\nin the curve of sun is all so well<\/p>\n
\nin the language of yearning
\nor is it a rain-filled place
\nwhere you are giving way
\nto me giving way\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0to another giving way
\neach drop giving
\nits way to thunder & puddle<\/p>\n
\nof thought without angels & innumerable angels
\n\u2014poet<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0you said\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0be like god<\/em><\/p>\n
\n& the unfinished curve of the & over itself
\n& I\u2019m a man in a way I barely understand
\n& is god like that\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t think so
\n& don\u2019t give a shit if you did
\nbut feel better for you & for me & for having been<\/p>\n
\nour intelligence\u2014everything you know
\nJack I don\u2019t know if I can
\nI don\u2019t know if the sun is as wide as I say
\nI don\u2019t know if I can sing dada to god<\/p>\n
\n& I don\u2019t know if what is raw is raw because it is fast
\nor what is raw is raw because it is somehow authentic
\nJack I am going as fast as I can
\nI am warlike & weary\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I love the moon
\nwhose yellow eye shines on the hill of my body
\nwhose yellow eye shines the hill
\nwhose body is more yellow than god\u2019s body
\nJack I don\u2019t know if the blooming clouds will ever blossom
\nor if the rain is the pollen of the sky<\/p>\n
\nbecause I can\u2019t explain it
\nor if I haven\u2019t thought enough about it
\nJack I know that men are tough and hardy and strong and all that
\nbut I\u2019m tired of it
\nI want to press my thin body into the wet & rain
\nto grow on the hillside
\nwhere there\u2019s a willow grows aslant the brook<\/p>\n
\n& I have long to go\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0& there you are
\nsaying time doesn\u2019t finish a poem<\/em>
\nas you move toward Zion borne
\non my gin angel beautiful\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0as snow on Thursday morning
\nwhen I am in the arms of another man
\n& for once the work is cinnamon & coffee & the impossibility
\nof holding both his hands at once while eating
\nmorning\u2019s half-burnt toast<\/p>\n