Samantha Chen
First Blood
It was summer.
I showed my underwear
to strangers & painted
my kitchen cabinets lime.
Night-laden, we stripped
by the lake dock,
& I clung to your back,
sliced through the current
as one shadowy figure.
Were we celebrating youth?
the campfire smoke lingered
in my corduroy jacket for days—
in your hair & your eyes,
your eyelashes & your lips &
when I kissed you, your mouth stung
of hawthorn & ash.
Do you remember it? my ass, welted
from a bee sting,
your hand, insisting
beneath my slip dress—
our fingers sticky with
plastic packaged honey buns & clay.
Every gas station we went to
looked the same,
& inside, every man did too.
How keenly we felt those eyes—
even the yearlings, which were not calves
as I’d thought,
leered from behind fences & fields
of goldenrod & aster.
& wasn’t it strange?
that dilapidated, vine-choked barn
red—with its blanched roof,
like snow in the midst of August?
& wasn’t it an omen?
that tick suckling behind my knee,
how we squealed & swelled with laughter,
before throttling its body
beneath the half-crescents
of our fingernails?
& wasn’t it pleasure?
how I felt something
akin to a shudder
pass through me,
the first time we laid down
in a clearing of dead stalks,
which raked our arms & legs
into thin scarlet slivers?
I drew you close
until my sweat was your sweat
& there was no name
for what we had done
& no shame.
The Whole Thing is the Hard Part
after Heather Christle
I lose language every day—
words like dew and apricot,
joy and mimicry,
ghost and arsenal.
Knowing there is no synonym for skinless
makes me feel nameless,
but I still play games with myself,
like—what’s the opposite of bloodshot?
Wildfire? Sparrow
hawk? Musket?
My body holds memory—
my stomach ringing like a clear bell,
my eyes dry and sharp like foxtails,
my throat buzzing
with the golden fields
and cicadas.
One night, I tell you roadkill flattened
on the side of the road
kills me
and so you pretend
the little black and white cat
on the asphalt is a skunk.
I still weep like a child—
abstinent from reason,
convinced I saw a silver collar
flash in the headlights.
How many years will I survive
like this, throwing away
tenderness, smashing cupboards,
stalking the calendar and its funerals?
There is no antonym to bloodshot,
and I lose to language everyday—
the warm bowl of your head
cupped beneath my ribcage;
& my heart, a loaded gun,
twinkling in your fist.