Chen Chen
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The Chateau
People in soap operas always have
more than enough candles. For dramatic dinners.
For lovemaking. For dramatic post-lovemaking spats, tiffs,
perhaps even squabbles. It’s possible. All thanks
to candles. I would like to have a more candlelit life,
but unscented, s’il vous plait. From the chateau
of my steamier life, I ask, Where do they go to buy
new candles? When do they have time?
There should be at least five episodes every season
devoted to the restocking of everyone’s candles.
From the chateau of my smutty luminosity, I worry.
What will they do if they have to
sit without candlelight, without their faces
lit just right? How will they accuse one another
of being their own father?
I put on my chapeau, my post-coital glow.
I am ready to propose.
But without candles, it’s just post-coital tristesse.
Or not even that. Imagine if they replaced all the candles
with fluorescents. They would have to become
a forensic crime show. Or a sitcom set in a dentist’s office.
Teeth would certainly be of great importance,
in either case.
Far Corner
Two people are waiting for me in a diner
called Val. Not Val’s. Val. I saw the name
painted on one of the walls. Two people
are waiting for me, sitting in front of the Val wall
in the Val diner. They are in the far corner
of the diner. They are in the far corner of a dream.
I told them I’d be right back. Don’t worry, nothing
serious, just have to run around the corner to check
on something.
The street is vaguely French. Maybe Dutch.
My own nationality is in my hat.
Yes, I can see that, says the new person,
the New Person of My Life.
But what, he asks, what do you do?
I write about relationships, I tell the New Person.
People with people. People with places.
Places with times. Times with people.
People with things. Things with things.
My poems, I tell the New Person, are more
social than I am, in real life.
The New Person nods, leans back, picks his teeth
with a toothpick. Then he hands me the toothpick.
Then I know: in another town, in a distant province
of the dream, my boyfriend is cheating on me.
I try calling him from a telephone booth
but the telephone booth is cheating on me, too.
Two people are waiting for me in a diner
called Val. Not Val’s. I saw the name painted
on one of the walls. Green letters, not quite
cursive. Like one person’s wavy black hair.
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Chen Chen is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, out now from BOA Editions, Ltd. Chen's work has appeared in two chapbooks and in publications such as Poetry, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast, and Poem-a-Day. He is a Kundiman fellow, a Lambda Literary fellow, and a PhD student at Texas Tech University. For more, visit chenchenwrites.com.