Jonathan Chin
Untitled

I broke bread with the Devil
It was pumpernickel
And he didn't spare on the butter.
We had sat down to discuss out contract.
He said I still owed him one shattered friendship
And 4 hours of masturbatory time.
I told him I was thinking
Of switching moral belief provideres;
That perhaps a nice fat Buddha
Would be more my style.
He quaintly reminded me
While thumbing the rim
Of his Bergamot
That I had sworn
With my right hand over my left heart.
So I took a firm hold
Of my right wrist
And deftly ripped my arm
From the nation of my body
And flopped it onto the table
Like a butchered side of beef.
I dabbed my mouth with my napkin
Got up and walked away.

Extended Metaphor

"How she longed for the winter then! --
Scrupulously austere in its order
of white and black
ice and rock, each sentiment within border,
and heart's frosty discipline
exact as a snowflake."
              -Sylvia Plath, Spinster

It's a desert of snow outside.
A brute cut disc of a moon looms
over suspended snow flake flurries.
Each flutter a Fermat's Theorem;
Each flitter a fractured France,
whether by razor rivulets of blood
or the static stomp of German boots.
Here the trees grow by fractals
brances cast down into poverty of leaves
by immutable laws of entropy
and the night echoes in the distance like history.

[ eternal as flesh and dust
as rain and vapor ]

This is our hearth; this is our home.
We come bearing ashes and embers
shielded between the cusps of our palms
from the brittle bite of frost forming
on our lacquer black leather gloves.
The smallest spark enough to entice us in
from the grim grey death foraging
on the lumbering landscape.
It would be beautitul if it weren't so dreadful.

But inside, the flame we kindled
danced madly on our scraps and shreds of papers.
We cuddle around it like clouds or sheep before a storm
biding our time like cheap accountants.
We may live for eternity; we may be made of marble or dust
but however contemptuously this fire may roar
it will soon whimper and patter out.

We measure our lives by its flickers
for even though we'll continue computing
missing components for our String Theory
it is only now that we get to see the beginning
of our passionate poetry.

For I am nothing more
than the enormous shadow
of a tiny boy
when he sits behind the sun.

And when the fire dies, like a great father to us,
we will rise amongst the swirling smoke
and gaze out on to the terrible tundra
waiting for our return.
Our last breaths will cling to the window pane;
We'll huff our whole souls, our spit, our sorrows onto the
window pane;
We'll spew chunks of the vegetable wraps we had for lunch
onto the window's pain
crying because the only thing keeping
good men from giving up hope
shouldn't be just an inch of glass.
We'll trace out our poems
of pain and pleasure
with the tips of our fingers
before we have to leave.

<< Back to Issue 6, 2004