Poem by Guest Contributor, Ken Chen

I want to write a poetry of things, histories, and accountability. A novel of poetry, a mundi of poetry—no metaphor or color, language without saturation.

What have I done? Nothing. And so the morning strikes us, flat as air. Did I say air? I meant “grief.” When the wind tore my umbrella into a skeleton, I swore at it as if it were a person. But why would I swear at a person? We often forget our kindness, as though we left it in our other pocket. We follow the trail of Law. Someone left the law as breadcrumbs pixelating like spores between the grass beneath the trees. The Law says, Leave this trail and transgress. Leave this trail so we know when to blame you. Leave so you know who you are.

Ken Chen is the Executive Director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, cofounder of CultureStrike, and the author of Juvenilia, selected by Louise Gluck for the Yale Series of Younger Poets.