Three poems by Daisuke Shen and Haolun Xu
I will admit that on November 10, 2022, Haolun Xu and I composed three poems together as we sat upon the steps of a closed elementary school outside Maria Hernandez Park, chainsmoking cigarettes in the middle of the night, passing a notepad between ourselves that we balanced upon shaking knees.
And it is true that before this we were despondent, and walked many laps around Maria Hernandez Park, sharing with one another our respective configurations of despair. We would like our readers to know, too, that we felt connected to the world by way of Haolun’s hand making brief contact with the Wendy’s employee’s as they handed us our respective Biggie Bags, Bacon Jr. Cheeseburgers fries two diet cokes, and afterward, we did not feel so alone. It would not be unfair either to say that our conversations were of a fast-paced and neurotic nature. We — meaning myself and Haolun — must confess that we were emboldened by the possibilities of imperfections and shared mania, and we are not sorry.
We’re number one at Wendy’s or Biggie bag, bacon jr. cheeseburger
I don’t like people but oh God, I hope one day I do like the local Wendy’s reopening drive-thru, with the lights on bright I’d wash anyone’s feet in the bathroom whether or not they sang of God because everyone’s a little dirty, even at Lincoln Center, or Prada before they kick me out who needs a writing residency when a psych ward works just fine? where there’s free applesauce — or almost free, or cheap enough, just like me.
At the movie theatre
Where the popcorn makes me indifferent to the hidden eyes watching me — watching Qiu Miaojin’s hidden face. It closes like a moth & again, flight escapes me. To live imprisoned behind, four rows down, where she can’t hear me & I’m trying to tell her the movie’s ending soon Dazai, are you my destined tomb? Am I the river in which you drowned? & if so, did I hold you well? Even when you got a little scared, did you feel safe — But I feel you’d prefer it to be opposite. That I awarded you the gift of cruelty like a puzzle piece story, like a weekend, or the two dots on a “V” before you learn its name.
At the doors of all my exes
Like a false ship, with good shoes for the wrong weather. Tonight, I am forced to reckon with the two stone lions flanking your front door. How they gossip expertly with each other, memorizing and reading my mind, knowing I run fastest with no shoes on. Knowing that my loyalty to memory is a foolish, greedy thing. And nothing else in me is selfish, because here I am waiting as a sculpture, between the trees, forming delusions that I can forgive everyone who’s seen my form and drank my blood as sacrament So what will you do, when you see me? Are you hungry, or scared? When you open your mouth [?] will it be answer or question —
Note: I am a very big fan of Haolun, both as a writer and as a friend. Here are excerpts from two poems of his which I love:
“The world is ending like an equation. As the ground shifted into an old man’s love, I fell to a laying place, and held my hands so close together I spoke a different language.”
“
Cruel World as Litany of Stars”, Guernica
“My grandfather taught my father to swim
by throwing him in a pond.
Swim downwards, he learned,
there are tunnels.”
"The Rabbit is Not a Strong Gamble", The Spectacle
x,
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