Christine Kwon: 4 Poems

The Body Electric

I have a rage stroke
waiting for the electrician:
I whip up and down
the shotgun house
also expecting Lowes
to call;
The cold sunny
beautiful day
outside
a stone
in my heart
already dead
I read Rilke
and think, sublime
poetry, why don't I
give up, I eat a small
hard delicious pear
and am moved
by the crisp sweetness
and aren't I here
to describe
pleasure

​I was dead once
I created nothing
and gave people
nothing
I was a paper insect
turning
to sparkle
on the windowsill

​paint freckling
the hand

aren't I here to show you
the light
in the other room

​I did the work
the body's electric
come turn it on

​white button down

Catullus                                 fuck off
I gave you chances                   rosebuds

​I'll never sound old
I'm a poet

I was reading Apollinaire
I was reading Balzac
I read Houllebecq and
moved on
I read Bernadette Mayer
looked at Sappho
in the middle of
Anne Rice's The Witching Hour,
Cecil Beaton's diaries
when I realized                        I'm not white

​I thought you were my friend
Catullus

​but it turns out                        you're nothing like me
nettles                                   and vine

​where am I going you ask?
a room

no one's been before
a room

​I made up
vaulted ceilings                       flowers

​white tie                                invitation only

​professor bloom

​I had a professor who's dead now
who used to pronounce upon things
as if laying flowers at a grave

​he'd say
that's the death of art
dear

​I wanted him to stay long enough
earthside
to decree my work good
to tack it onto the canon

​which always seemed to me to be a flimsy thing
like the daisy chains
I used to tie together

​my fingers smelling green

​I imagined a very long line of flowers strung on and on

​he had the power to add me, too
he wrote the canon
it must have been lovely to create an imaginary kingdom like that

​in second grade
there was a plastic house inside
our classroom
we girl scouts
didn't let just anybody in
though they came knocking on our door

​there's a plastic house
inside my heart

​but I let everyone in
at a certain point you can't be picky

​once my friend visited our old professor
when I was mentioned

​he said 'ah the girl with flowers in her hair'
I thought if anything
my hair could be canonized

​GREAT WHITE HUNTER

​It's night.
A golden leopard treads
through the house.
Long has it been
since I've been dead
and yet the sound,
you hear it,
my steps linen,
I make you open your eyes
like you put on glasses
like you are right on the edge
of falling straight through.
The warmth you feel
The chill you feel
is from me
I've let my tongue loose
in the wind.

Men in work shirts sit in the quiet
listening
wondering if I'm what
would have changed their lives.
I snatch I pang I murder.
I require
no men and tanks,
I don't even
need a dress,
I am already in your head,
that burning document— 

​Why do you languish
thus
drooping as if all
dull earth
when you could
set yourself
on fire

​no shoulds
says a therapist
I laugh

The translucent lizard
climbing the wall
has more to do with me— 
eager to burn to taste
to dance in the night

​advertising the longing
of its pulsing blue heart

​ah you hate me
you must be afraid
of beauty and truth

​stand in line
boys
grey slabs
all names
no spirit

Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue (Southeast Missouri State University Press), which won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize and debuts in March 2023. Her poems are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, The Harvard Advocate, and The Xavier Review. She lives in New Orleans. Find her work on christinekwonwrites.com or follow her on Instagram @theschooloflonging.