Connie Yu
3 Poems
4/28
in setting
intentions
for this trip, I
write: to record
in real time which
in writing I felt i
had never done
this is because of a
deferral of feeling
and a replacement currency
of responsibility
this is the reason
for panic attacks
in a state of calm
i learn the terms
and then I lean in
there are sounds of
rain that seem particular
and vast with bibliography
but then the street opens out
where dad and dads upward
and outward had lived
soon to be parking lot
fenced with childlike paintings
the thing about fences is
have you ever seen a parking
lot in shanghai
nor i
there are discrete posters
on similar tiled fences
down Miyun Lu, down Chifeng Lu
and that’s just the neighborhood
with comics, softening the
decree of ‘neighborhood
revitalization’ this is
about xenophobia
and class, the leaning
on ‘licenselessness’ as reason
to excuse government hand
I am not the one to mourn
that change, or the violence that
is memorialized (its pastness, capacity
to control that passing
of time) in fence
through the VR viewer
at home, I find this
Google Street View
moment from someone
with a VPN and a camera affixed
to sweaty head
of that alleyway house
in the course of demolition
things that speak to the frame
rather than the clear content, which
is frozen, familiar, uncanny, all known
feelings, are:
the whorl of sky that closes in at the apex
of this street
the whorl of head below
mise-en-abyme of figurelessness
in this way
keeping record demands
a decapitation
the viewer falls from its head
the viewer is fallen from
the viewer remains on the ground
the ground remaining is such
I am a fan of crass explanations
if they take the form of a body
for instance
one that crashes, head elsewhere
into furniture that just
comes up
soft corner with immediate
surround, this contact
destabilizes a sense of
either ground, the experience
of temporal field
becomes narratable by
touch
the experience of stuck
is confirmed by crash
5/28, for Adrienne
to follow up, some acts:
what we are learning is
love feels urgent in times of stagnation
this could look like Shen Xiling’s Crossroads, 1
937 I write, 6/20/2016,
filmed in alleyway housing in Shanghai, or my general rib, about youth
unemployment, opening and closing moments in the city,
by the water, the rail + street cars depositing familiar faces, the comic despair of love + worthlessness,
of studying abroad, of living somewhere where the
noises seep + you dress up
I’d add now, simply: passing sheets and clearing walls
every permeation a love letter
a move toward the deferral of meeting
I think of this later
after our last go-around
to fold the fabric deliberately
takes two
this third act, we meet.
this meeting is frontal
this song is slow, another
go at madam butterfly
another go at stocking the
set, to be cleared with better
sense of time
there is something you say
when we sit afoot the set,
audience to this final play,
the objects: folding screen, printed camo
hunter’s cap, skirted table, rocks
the scene: we are realizing how these
iterations, ‘practice,’ fall into narrative, fall
narratively, a theater of mutual gestures,
if so, this act is liberatory, speculative where
the others are historical, suspended space
we are padding our bodies till they
feel productively unfamiliar
how is this shape, you look like a painting
this is a goodbye to our bodies, this is
the thing you say
we begin this walk, try mirroring each other slow
I am beginning to know the thick of your foam
I am beginning to see better through the stretch
I am beginning to wear through the toes
I am beginning to forget the cathecting toward particular
object this is the narrative: that if the set-up were not filmed,
it is of course because we did not set anything up
the logic of the analog is about moving in love in
the imperialist structure that goes on
the takeaway, the housekeeping, that responsibility
ours, can be deliberate ritual
this might look like: zipping again into acute discomfort
these suits smell like: we wore them exhaustively
you might ask me how deep is my love
Teresa wallops the air with her sweet sound
I couldn’t translate
but I can dance slow
through the screen with no screening
lights glaring and at risk of going out
after we leave, I have to hook my arm
through the folding screen frame
to keep it from moving
to keep you from going, cid speaks
feeling myself here
as long as you are
as long as
et cetera. I bring the screen home, lean it
and later i’ll tend to this sunburn
made rash from shoulderfoam
we carry our backpacks, matching, away
some other time we can run it thru again
what about opening, closing moments in this city
may look like content. more than ever
we interest ourselves in the form — it iterates.
each time the possibility looms that another
fuse may blow, it’s possible that
this isn’t yet funny
to you
6/13
I eat the donut peach you put in my shirt
as surprise, palm it, there’s a half inch of my skin
on all sides. I incise from the top, peel the fuzz
down with my teeth, and go in. a day too ripe, your
flesh green-gray, structurally self-holding, still.
what I’m thinking of the whole time is the scene
from call me by your name, the one with
the juice still running down come arrival.
today I’ve also eaten a nectarine, still hard
while waiting for my bike’s front wheel
to be unstuck and amended with air.
the first time I came by, mohamed intercepted
me and flipped you over on 50th, pinching
the chain glibly and, all seemed well,
he insisted on filling both tires, which
now it’s clear, sped the leak, but thanks all
around, that’s useful, and he makes his way to
52nd street, because he doesn’t fuck around
with Choy Wong. I get that.
I rub my eyes, resetting, and they sour, spice
from the cabbage I’ve been kneading,
finding this project in the morning,
with your impetus. I travel down Washington
to do right by this, fabric in two piles (for loom,
for as is) behind me.
we compare daikon prices remotely,
I’m where I need to be. tonight,
I’ve gotta go to the barn, it’s been
more than a minute, and this means
that I’ll see lisa at the wonderful dragon,
now thrice a customer, for smokes and a fried
thing to hold me down. she told me, take two,
that she moved from Cambodia in ’79, which
we nod across the staggered plexi screen, was
a rough one; I read about the massacre on Veng Sreng
in 2013, the holdover of the Khmer Rouge on the day-
to-days of women workers, on my porch today. there
are ways of feeling closer to your neighbors that happen
privately. I write down about the philly tenant’s union,
to pass on to fran, who’s had a rough week and still
brings me a hefty forever 21 bag
of dishware, happy housewarming, this Monday. on
this self-same porch, I had the revelation, with you,
that the surprise of difference - no pet, no chore
is modifiable by our cultural proximity. no lapdogs
for our kind; dishes done out of a sense of propriety
learned without name or money attached, which
is also to say, for myself, the guilt I pick up
and am only, years later, learning to set down
on stage. the way I love you is like this:
when there is no pressure on this is all I want
the solidity of I want you feels absolute,
this, is nice, still and yet. if there is a structure of
feeling for ease of relation, and the wonder of it, it may
look like a clamshell box, plastic bone clasp, cheap indigo
linen lining. there were small books inside once, the top layer
fingered through and reordered in hap, the next few still
factory, touched by one or three hands up the line. one day
soon these books will be scanned, the fabric of container
sunstained, and in it will be installed objects of
consideration. when you move, I think all more fondly of
you.
when you ask a question, I feel like a raised bed.
remember where I parked my car,
and I’ll call you by yours.