4 Poems

Yuyi Chen

 

My fridge forklifts at night, so much to be done so much 
more than quick tomatoes. I’m fundamentally against storing
& stalling, hence quite reversible, I am made of volatiles. Might
my neighbor be surveilling, easy to be watched, my fridge conceded. 

Wanna come by and lose? Flash searchlight I reason your tempo 
with historical crescendo – my living too cramped.

Yet my neighbor’s doorknob rumbles again. I’m back I’m gone
I’m back I’m gone I’m back I’m gone I’m back again I’m back.
Not much else is going on; new music surely expects death. Call 
my mom; my mom is currently at night. I ask her not to bring 
a suitcase of that but whoever is up there dictates the time. 

I am being listened to. 

Out of fridge a wish starts to nerve. 

“He’s ten point five years old” she says. 
She understands the math well. 

Another example:
“Tomorrow is going to rain +1.” 

Prophecy or redundancy, hard to tell. 

Now she establishes herself as a vague mom.
If you know a mom you are being cheated as well. 

As rebellion she teaches her child to walk non-
registered. Hard to tell a landscape 

from the gist. Where do you draw 
the real? Always ready to fall, the tiniest 

tyranny, at first sight of the world.

Contemplation is ineviatble, but so is night.

She’s mellow, too, in fever she has one man to lean on.
Being old is self-explanatory. Once wiped

fish from its sharp bones, she’s now grateful  

for the nice people covered by health insurance & retirement pension
who will throw her onto a hospital bed. When 

she approaches time she impasses 

dead husbands in court. Our women are dozing off
No wonder cops parade pigeons, a feather

crisis, feather crisis she sly through 

Now she tells you about her spring. 


The splinted objects of seasons change, while as sharp

of a bowl served many movements, on floor, many times,

can soften their determination, their capacity to hurt;

which means the mild can be the extreme, 

 the melt, arguably, carried along. 


The weather wears flexible crowds.

She throughout the years, however, found a solid wave 

to brace. Holding object again, with message on, 

now she tells you she recognizes a negation.  

She continues it, fostering it, like homes,  

those confinement, labor, and close,  

closeness nonetheless - 


she tells you, futility it is. 

Fun and with company.