Personal Pizza Personal Poem
by Chen Chen
I am so so
so so sleepy.
Or hungry. Spiritually? As well as physically? How often
I wish I could fold a poem up & eat it
then sleep in it. I am so sleepy
& so restless.
Must be all the world’s beauty. Must be!
Alas even that exclamation
point won’t rouse me from this very horizontal
afternoon, this hotel bed from which I am
looking out onto shimmering
green leaves. Hello,
the tops of trees
otherwise known as treetops—
I can’t decide what to call you. Who can? Exhausting
inexhaustible beauty of the world. It’s a wonder
anyone sleeps
or wakes up. I wonder
what my boyfriend is doing back home in another time
zone. Must be night there. He must be sleepily
rewatching one of his favorite
Arnold Schwarzenegger films. Or he could be sleepily
pooping. Gloriously
night pooping. Clearing it all
out. Acquiring a stunning new clarity on this mortal coil.
& perhaps our dog has joined him.
Our dog, whose favorite film is There Is Still Rotisserie Chicken
on the Table, Is It Not for Me?
My boyfriend, our dog,
our neighbors, their cats, Arnold Schwarzenegger, & the weird idea
of a contented life on this mortal coil—
night pooping.
Is everyone doing it without me?
Whelmed over by the world, its rotisseries & wastes,
whelmed under by my severe
lack of both, I close my eyes.
Then hear a bird
saying bird things to another. Over & over, in a tree,
perhaps the top. I don’t know what’s being said
but it sounds very naughty.
Chen Chen’s second book, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is a best book of 2022 according to the Boston Globe, Electric Lit, NPR, and others. It has also been named a 2023 Notable Book by the American Library Association. His debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. He has received two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from Kundiman, the National Endowment for the Arts, and United States Artists. He was the 2018-2022 Poet-in-Residence at Brandeis University and currently teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.