Quintessence: to Queer
by Chen Chen
Yes, I can relate to Britney Spears. I, too,
have oops done it again. Then become stronger than yesterday.
I, too, strive to be finally
fucking free of all my blood family’s walls, whims, & I enjoy, whenever
I am awake, letting the world
know. O Britney, let us make more whimsy.
Let us enlarge our ticklish, purplish space in the face of those
who would rather our dancingknowing
shrink. Let us danceknow. Let us discoball & wreckingball, let us
cartwheel quantumly, let us critique
what I’ve left out, let’s get real.
I don’t know what it’s like to be forced to get an IUD, to have to
testify in court that despite wanting
another baby, your own father has made sure you can’t. & I don’t know
what it’s like to be white & wealthy.
Though Britney, all my life I’ve been learning
how to relate to you. Britney, really, would you ever relate to me?
& would that, would my shiny relatability
do anything? Britney, I’m really, in my ways, talking to
myself. & to my fellow gaysians
who adore you. Who relate
& don’t relate—to you, to ourselves. To each other. Dear adorable
& never just adorable queers,
let’s gather. Let’s sing to each other in the queerest, snack-filledest
karaoke room somehow
big enough for all our sweet
belting, sour belching. We, too, make it hot. Every last one of us
is putting the pop & also the star back
into pop star. Let’s put the ass back into asstonish!
Let’s, at the tippy
top of our gorgeous lungs,
hum the rest of the beloved song, the beloved
words to which
we have, at the moment,
uh, misplaced.
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.