#i'm always on abt similes that don't illuminate anything but this one literally & figuratively *does*

[aeide-thea]

In the City

                        for Monica Sok

These bridges are a feat of engineering. These pork & chive dumplings        we bought together, before hopping on a train & crossing bridges, are a feat of engineering. Talking to you, crossing bridges        in trains, eating pork & chive dumplings in your bright boxcar of a kitchen in Brooklyn, is an engineer’s dream-feat        of astonishment. Tonight I cannot believe the skyline because the skyline believes in me, forgives me my drooling        astonishment over it & over the fact that this happens, this night, every night, its belief, glittering mad & megawatt like the dreams        of parents. By the way, is this soy sauce reduced sodium? Do you know? Do we care? High, unabashed sodium intake!        Unabashed exclamation points! New York is an exclamation I take, making my escape, away from the quiet snowy commas of Upstate        & the mess of questions marking my Bostonian past. In New York we read Darwish, we write broken sonnets finally forgiving        the Broken English of Our Mothers, we eat pork & chive dumplings, & I know, it’s such a 90s fantasy        of multiculturalism that I am rehashing, but still, in New York I feel I can tell you how my mother & I        used to make dumplings together, like a scene out of The Joy Luck Club. The small kitchen, the small bowl of water        between us. How we dipped index finger, thumb. Sealed each dumpling like tucking in a secret, goodnight.        The meat of a memory. A feat of engineering. A dream of mother & son. Interrupted by the father, my father        who made my mother get on a plane, a theory, years of nowhere across American No’s, a degree that proved useless.        Proved he was the father. I try to build a bridge to my parents but only reach my mother & it’s a bridge she’s about to        jump off of. I run to her, she jumps, she’s swimming, saying, Finally I’ve learned—all this time, trying to get from one useless        chunk of land to another, when I should’ve stayed in the water. & we’re drinking tap water in your bright Brooklyn kitchen.        I don’t know what to tell you. I thought I could tell this story, give it a way out of itself. Even here, in my fabulous        Tony-winning monologue of a New York, I’m struggling to get to the Joy, the Luck. I tell you my mother still        boils the water, though she knows she doesn’t have to anymore. Her special kettle boils in no time, is a feat of engineering.        She could boil my father in it & he’d come out a better person, in beautiful shoes.        She could boil the Atlantic, the Pacific, every idyllic American pond with its swans. She would.

       —Chen Chen (2016)

#chen chen #poetry #the thing abt this is that certain things abt it are cliché (a shit thing to say abt a life but a fair thing to say abt art) #but then like. it's so clearly fully *aware* of that & also doing some clever interesting things that i still like & respect it anyway #also yeah predictably the bit that Got me was the sort of o'hara-ish 'unabashed sodium intake! / unabashed exclamation points!' #which is like. an obvious thing to like & not even the best thing it does‚ ultimately #like the way it dips back into 'bridges' #and 'feat of engineering' #and repeatedly reframes them #and like. that final 'she would'! #and 'this night‚ every night‚ its belief‚ glittering mad & megawatt like the dreams of parents'— #i'm always on abt similes that don't illuminate anything but this one literally & figuratively *does* #the parents' entrance to the poem is thru the simile #and then again the dumpling-making with his mother is 'like a scene / out of the joy luck club' #meta and metaphor and the way reality is only accessible thru these fictions #anyway. idk. i think it's easy to underestimate this poem & it's doing more than you maybe think