How to Make Language Lawless

Abstract

How to Make Language Lawless* Ching-In Chen (bio) Bee builds sooty words poem as fungus waits outside jammed legislative talk therapies for a microphone grab Bee and Cook meet late-night belly pressure infects thunder resting against rusty jukebox playing only one song I hate twanky Bob Dylan, tries Cook, watching Bee's glint fading into storm. Bee, a late shift sweater by a tardy bus, re-arranging Cook, Dylan, customers. Puzzling out excessive monster wall. sting of pepper if bridge between lyric and story Next-day Cook sears through future's mistaken wine drinking spreads each caught between bodiless sea and cracked fired house desiccated letter to maximum though poets generally known for closet space and terminator slash when Bee arrives at counter generously slabbing cabinet with sticky words Cook lean again twinkly cash register dispense cake and salt brews sometime tea saves firelight if morning ritual and fable dwells soft tissue, in nerves of a bee grows a poem by building a wall. Very much like a paragraph of future—could be smoke, melody, but nonetheless wall of word, sold by all churches thick layer excreted by morning dew Bee traps Cook's tiny hairs, itchy fingers, broadbean smile in the wall. Surrounds each paragraph with small direction moat. A base build up through fire and terror. Each layer hesitates to turn corner, to set stone, trap mouse, forward deadline to waiting eyes. Not a safe then, not a cozy then. Dear reader, in the future burn out church unfurl script, plant in the future pavements taint rainbow mouthpieces questions by each in the future graft love from body box amplifier. In the future her growth derive from witchy pills All you'll see of us remains residue. [End Page 258] Ching-In Chen CHING-IN CHEN is the author of The Heart's Traffic (2009) and recombinant (2017) as well as co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (2016). A Kundiman, Lambda, Callaloo and The Watering Hole Fellow, they are part of the Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation writing communities. Their work has appeared in The Best American Experimental Writing, The & NOW Awards 3: The Best Innovative Writing, and Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. They are senior editor of The Conversant and currently teach creative writing and world literature at Sam Houston State University. www.chinginchen.com Notes *The title taken from a phrase spoken during the Pink Door Fall Retreat 2017, a writing gathering for women and genderqueer writers of color organized by Rachel McKibbens. I first encountered the idea of the poem as fungus from Kimiko Hahn's thinking on the zuihitsu poetic form. Some words borrowed from Cassie Nicholson. Copyright © 2017 Johns Hopkins University Press