Forthcoming in Vestiges_05: Lacunae
Amanuensis
after Françoise Gilot
I imagine killing all the ants in my apartment with my smallest vibrator
Make them dance and shake, give them little seizures
Like my body when I come.
Submission is easiest when done alone.
I identify more with a doormat than a goddess.
A misfit cumulus cloud reaches its fingers upward
toward a larger network of clouds
in hopes of landing a new job in the cloudy marketplace.
Networking is what you make of it.
You can be the woman who says yes or the woman who says no.
I don’t expect to see leopard prints on young women
but when I do I make a run for it.
The survival rate is higher for those who don’t react in ugly situations
But I am not afraid of death or the little bruises I pick up along the way.
I can get down naked on all fours and be the woman who says yes
Even though I am the woman who says no.
Peregrination
The woman tried to bite her tongue off
A distinctly Chinese form of suicide
Watches the entire night disappear unto itself
A murdering den with golden arrows
Famous for its fragility
Lack of fertility, fabulous mobility
One must sever a leg in order
To understand their impulses
A tongue is not a limb
but an escape route
Into the arena of tiny decisions
Where an opportunity
Presents itself in the form of a five-pointed star
Lone pawn overlooking pond of crooked pawns
Everything that happens within a lifetime becomes
Less new by the hour
Luminous spheres roll out of celestial bodies
Little errands on the run
Those found dragging their feet
Will be picked up one-by-one
& taken to a third place
A neck of land surrounded by water
Where small children grow into ugly children
& vanish through windows in the middle of the night
New Town
The man asked if I preferred tigers or elephants.
A tiger is an obvious selection so I say elephant and
quickly walk away. At the market I do not like to be
bothered so I continue to touch every piece of fruit
and examine them for bruises and blemishes. I do not
have a golden touch but if I did, it would quickly turn
the day lackadaisical like stale rain in a bucket.
A new town emerges from the rain and becomes a
bigger version of the modern home. Old neighborhoods
spill into a river making up much of the morning news.
One man caught a fish with his umbrella and then made
soup with the head and tail. Eating becomes a reminder
of livelihood. Everything I touch sinks. I try to think happy
thoughts but am scared of attachment so I think about
blonde movie stars and their fading stardoms. Sometimes
I think about tigers, elephants, and giraffes. Try to guess
how many strands of hair are on my head. Once the juices
have settled I will elaborate.
Second Paradise
Tame animals majestically return into the wild
The pageantry unfolding in the
Slowest of motions
Every donkey, ox, horse & sheep
Running away into the wilderness
Completely forgetting their previous nature
A second paradise
Opaque & without backstory
Flora breathe into the faces of elders
Smashed against rocks
This is what is called
The female pleasure gap
It is real & gaping
& smells of the greenest grasses
Where long limbs grow toward heaven
to honor the judges they love
& the judges they don’t
Love Story
Upper hands feast on the marmalade of the dead
An act of God followed by a blind but kind feeling
An enormous hand sweeping its wrinkly fingers over the earth
Loose marbles all rolling toward the same inevitability
I would do anything to give birth to a saint
To learn how to end the process of deliberation without breaking my spirit
Buildings undulate in a city that once was flat
What starts as a pragmatic relationship between two men quickly turns into primitive love impulse
Neighbors aimlessly walk around a village built over a wide network of lakes
A decision made based on convenience proves to be a terrible idea
A god on a corinthian column planted in the center of a city overlooks a sea of traffic
I gaze up at it and think of something rare like the last sexual experience in the world and whether there are circumstances where betrayal is allowed
The hardest part of self-practice is keeping your eyes open
The hardest part of keeping your eyes open is having to take responsibility for the reckoning
A reckless teenager is swallowed up by a crack that splits open in the middle of a sidewalk
Winnicott says: When it comes to having our lives planned out for us, heaven help us if the thinkers take over!
A woman without a plan hides on a roof at night and gives birth to a girl and a pig
I transmit a tiny bolt of electricity into the pig’s head
Sending shockwaves into a city where women hold up half the sky
On the main highway, Jesus offers each driver a new life in the form of a monarch butterfly
I know that the ones with the upper hand are the ones with the story
Upper hands determine what kind of fear is credible and what kind is not
Upper hands live in comfortable homes by the seaside
Upper hands resist change so intensely that the rest of their body has no choice but to disintegrate
I wonder what it feels like to be magically torn apart in a surprising display that burns down 45,000 acres of farmland
A wildfire makes gender all the more insignificant
Gender being nothing but an iteration of sentimentality and shame
I want to die the most beautiful death in the deepest blue sea
I want my death to be comfortable and homey, but also victorious and sexy like a pack of half-naked men riding wild animals
A fleet of monarch butterflies descends from a tall shaft of sunlight into a sea of traffic
A love story in the distance fans out its feathery wings
There was a time I was much braver than I am now
There was a time I accidentally flowered through my pants, breaking the zipper
My distant cousins glowing the entire time
What first was a shack in the center of the city becomes a birthing center for saints
Accused of a crime
Forced into a confession
Forced into their true nature: A dangling piece of fruit estranged from its tree
Treeless tundra with a barely visible horizon and no landmarks1
A birthmark from the heavens received with open hands and open faces
1 The line “Treeless tundra…” is from a text by Niina Pollari.
No Rain No Rain
Frankie said that giving birth
is a pain that feels both ancient
and modern.
Some people are incapable
of communicating their love
when everything is clouded by grief.
Short-term goals include:
Buy new clothes one size up
and laugh more often.
Not knowing how much pain
is involved in an act can make you
see things that aren’t even there.
Freedom can end up looking a lot
like abandonment, especially if you
are a caterpillar.
Going into labor marks the beginning
of a separation as well as the dawn of
a new regime.
No rain, no rain
she said while waving her
hand over the giant machine.
Rain makes way for rot
and you don’t have the right
to rot away.
—
Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. Her publications include Community Garden for Lonely Girls (Gramma Poetry 2017), I’m Sunlight (The Song Cave, 2016), C O N C R E T E S O U N D (2011), a collaborative artists’ book with Audra Wolowiec, and Accumulations (Publication Studio, 2010).