Justin Chin (1969–2015)
SELECTED POEMS
A History of Geography
America is a place far away,
as far as London/ Australia/ or Canada
any Western country where people speak English,
All a page in an atlas/ a place on a map, can't drive/ walk/
take a bus to —
I want to go there, so I buy magazines, take a Biro felt pen,
draw arrows to people in the photographs & write my name
on their foreheads,
I want to go there so I fuck their people,
don't care if they're good-looking or turn me on or not,
I let them take me,
do what they want with me
even if it hurts me bad/ makes me bleed/ makes me bruise/ sore/ & angry/
sad/ satisfied/ & happy/ mad/ desolate,
let them do what they want with a slab of meat
because they're giving me a place I cannot get to.
So I throw my legs up in the air,
spread them in toilets/ spread them in parks/ spread them in
hotel rooms,
rich hotels/ with real fancy sheets and bedspreads/ with mint
chocolates and strawberries by starched white pillows &
fancy room service/ & nice uniformed bellmen/ &
receptionists who look at me and know what I'm doing/ cos
they want to do it too/ done it before,
maybe cheap rundown hotels/ with shared bathrooms & thin
walls/ creaky beds/ bed lice & stinking men.
But I don't care cos I'm in America/ in London/ in Australia/
in France/ in anywhere but this town.
This town where I am the son of a generation/ lost
to 25 years of what price paradise.
This town so clean and green, everything wiped over with
Dettol every week,
wiped so clean, they take away your insides
& give you dog biscuits & standard rations to replace what
they've disinfected.I hold things I cannot say in my mouth,
I hold acts I cannot do in my chest,
hold a bitter stinking love in my groin.
Let them wipe away everything else,
wipe me/ disinfect me/ hose me down,
but I got what nobody else got
and they can't wipe that away
not even with their industrial strength bleach.
& I don’t/won't care what they make me sing/chant justice,
equality, peace, progress, prosperity, happiness for my
life,
it's all words that I sing/ chant/ move my lips/
know what it means,
and that is dangerous.
Wrap myself in newsprint,
wrap myself in satellite transmissions,
wrap myself in truth/lies/ truth/ half truths,
believe what I wrap myself in knowing
I cannot go back.They want to distill me,
take the queer sky out of my body.
Let it sit, simmer until my fire burns up in itself.
& when I am dark/ when I have no more light/ when I am no
more an abomination/ when I am no more shame/ when I am face
again/ when the collective being of me worships god, family,
education and the collective administrative silver spoon,
then I will be back in the fold
The prodigal child, back from exile.Please let me live
and rage in the realm of wonderment,
to know that the hand in the glove is not the fascist halal
rationed kiss that makes me feel like a stranger/ an
outsider in my own.
Let me live in all that my blood is mine,
in the color of spirits
backwards.I am blind,
born blind, spirits come to me in polaroids of abstract
paintings that throw mud and saliva on my eyes to see
the new issue of Blue Boy,who show me that love is deaf,
born deaf, spirits come to me as a bluesy lullaby, a
cat’s howl at night that fills my ears/ that I can’t
hear/ don’t want to hear/ whispers yes that chokes me
till I can’t speak, born dumb,
spirit is a voice that no one will hear because everybody is
born deaf, dumb and blind
in the bright lights holding us in a circle jerk, to the
music we speak of nothing that cannot find our minds.
& I am in this world of pirates, prayers, ascensions, coups,
attacks, counterattacks, shadows, illness, deceptions,
manipulations, addictions, metaphysicians, hyperboles,
poetics, politics, plays, perspiration and love.
by Justin Chin
from Bite Hard (1997)
© 1997 Justin Chin, from the book Bite Hard. Published by Manic D Press: San Francisco. Posted with permission of the publisher.
