Chen Chen

     The world contains
crab fried rice & is thus beautiful.
     Or: crab fried rice
is more beautiful than the world.
     Which is true?


     Which is truer?
The world is terrible & people
     are beautiful.
Or: people are terrible & the world—
     beautiful.


     I know this:
life is a joy & living’s hard.
     In other words,
being alive, isn’t that the hardest joy?
     & love,


     a kind of death
that means you’re living.
     Or is love
the very aliveness that helps you
     to, one day, die?


     Please tell me
if I’m wrong, but I think it’s
     like this: love,
when it’s love, is a world, a kinder
     here in which you wake


     after a nap
that followed something of an argument
     to the smell of rice cooking,
no, cooked rice reheating, & then
     you’re at the table,


     watching scallions fall
on all that crab, a huge helping, true
     heaping of both,
delivered by the hands that know you
     terribly well.


     Let’s talk,
he says, he who knows you
     love crab & scallions, hate
confrontations, these meetings with
     truth, your own


     innermost &
the innerly together. But,
     as your heart or
more crucially, your belly, knows—
     they have to happen.


     So why not
over this radiant bowl of rice?
     Little feast, like
what your parents made
     for you,


     plus the kind of
conversation they rarely made
     with you.
Love as food & words, both.
     & maybe


     there’s still
a beautiful chance for this both
     with them.
They must sense it, too, how being alive
     is the most serious thing


     & living—
the funniest. But first, sit
     with him.
Eat. & talk. Remember
     to chew.

Spring 2024

Poetry

Quintessence: Crab Fried Rice

     They keep drifting in,
these yellow petals, through the kitchen window—
     look how our dog
paws at them, sniffs, as though they are soft
     scraps of his lost


     dream—perhaps
they’re trying to refind his mind, return to him
     some forgotten something,
but already he’s moved on, to his water bowl,
     slappy slurps his whole


     world, as the petals fail
to reach him, yet fill up our conversation,
     paving over the little
(was it little?) question I was
     about to ask you—

Quintessence: in the Kitchen

     I’m no philosopher, but some days I think
we were put on this pale blue dot to have long ass debates
     over ways to make coffee & levels of sugar
in tea &, most importantly, the correct placement of semi-colons
     in the soul. Ah nitpicking, quibbles,


     & typo-inspired tiffs. Some days my name, too, is Irk
Incarnate. My very hair gets into it, lectures the shampoo bottles
     on their slippery grammar, even slipperier
mechanics. How yummy, each opportunity to nibble at the abyss
     of the minor; the sheer bottomlessness of


     the bothersome. How, why
aren’t we crushed by the massive pleasure of our myriad
     pettinesses—I’m fine
with remaining baffled by that. Though I’m sure by now some intrepid
     or reckless philosopher has found their passion.

Chen Chen

Chen Chen

Poetry

Spring 2024

Quintessence: Crab Fried Rice

Spring 2024

Quintessence: in the Kitchen

Spring 2024

Quintessence: to Quibble