God Only Remembers Dragons Or Nationalism
Great British presence in my given name
Oriental demands to assimilate
Requiem for the sleeping tiger in my bloodline
Driven by promise or Drifting from conscience?
Opium lingers, the essence of my accent
Natural is different in Chinese
Artist
A vibrant line snakes its way up the wall
Dancing with life, radiating with energy
A true masterpiece in its own right
Colorful cursive caressing cinderblock canvas
Mama comes in to behold the spectacle
The creator’s creator views the creation
Her praise will be legendary
An ass whooping to go down in art history
Getting Ready For School
Sunlight slips through my window
and pulls me out of my slumber while
at the same time, somewhere in the
world, a soldier pulls a girl my age out of
bed and forces her to the ground.
As I sit up to stretch, indulging
in every satisfying crackle and pop
of my young and pliable joints, a snap
resonates through the stone walls of a
prison cell somewhere in the world and a
man falls to his knees.
I watch listlessly as milk pours
from the carton into my bowl of cereal,
then wipe away traces of my carelessness as
a boy stands outside somewhere in the world,
catching every droplet of rain he can because
he knows this nectar is scarce.
The radio in my mother's car is not loud,
but if I would pay attention I'd hear
two emotional Caucasian voices entangled
in a dance, two-stepping between "mental
illness" and "gun control."
I don't care.
My mind agonizes over one thing only,
the history test I never found time
to study for, and I reassure myself
that my life fucking sucks.
I Don’t Have a Poem for Class, Mr. Hedges
I searched everywhere for one:
between the corners of my creativity,
under the creases and folds of my
sentimentality, inside the warm,
expansive, pockets of my empathy,
across the sprawling landscape
of my sensitivity, and even behind
the impenetrable wall of my
bitterness.
But I never found a poem.
All I found was emptiness.
So I took it home with me,
dressed it up in a spiffy-looking
tuxedo, combed its hair with
happy little metaphors, and chopped
it up in into these neat little lines
all poem-like or whatever
Now I’m just hoping you don’t notice.
Bird
Flying
is just a
horror story
It’s liberating
yet so frighteningly
expansive, man, get a grip
or you might just crash and burn and
surrender yourself to an abyss
and have no method of getting back out.
Nobody Ever Brings Me Any Goddamn Cupcakes
All of my birthdays are trash
so in my mind, I toss them out
Crumple them up and launch them
across the room and watch them
miss the wastebasket, damn it
"The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living"
Its mouth hangs agape
And every hungry tooth is poised,
While each streamlined fin
Brims with enough prehistoric fury
To propel itself towards me
And devour me in one swift gulp
But it doesn’t move.
It is a dead tiger shark
Frozen in time, stranded in space
Ensnared in glass, steel,
And a 5% formaldehyde solution.
So why does it feel so real?
Dead sharks don’t eat people,
I reassure myself.
Dead sharks don’t need food.
Then what, if not hunger,
Compels this ancient horror
To stretch its jaws wide open
Like some aquatic Tantalus?
Maybe it is hunger.
Because, at its roots,
Hunger is an unquenchable desire
For survival. It persists forever
Beyond humanity or carnality,
Snaking its way through the oceans
Of history and posterity,
Until it finally reaches eternity
And disperses.
While digesting my theories,
I absentmindedly step closer
To the tank. Now, in this shark,
I am being digested as well.
Gordon Shi 