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Self-Portrait as So Much Potential

By Chen Chen

Dreaming of one day being as fearless as a mango.
 
As friendly as a tomato. Merciless to chin & shirtfront.
 
Realizing I hate the word “sip.”
 
But that’s all I do.
 
I drink. So slowly.
 
& say I’m tasting it. When I’m just bad at taking in liquid.
 
I’m no mango or tomato. I’m a rusty yawn in a rumored year. I’m an arctic attic.
 
Come amble & ampersand in the slippery polar clutter.
 
I am not the heterosexual neat freak my mother raised me to be.
 
I am a gay sipper, & my mother has placed what’s left of her hope on my brothers.
 
She wants them to gulp up the world, spit out solid degrees, responsible grandchildren ready to gobble.
 
They will be better than mangoes, my brothers.
 
Though I have trouble imagining what that could be.
 
Flying mangoes, perhaps. Flying mango-tomato hybrids. Beautiful sons.
 

Chen Chen, "Self-Portrait As So Much Potential" from When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities.  Copyright © 2017 by Chen Chen.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Poet Bio

Chen Chen

Chen Chen’s debut collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award. He teaches at Brandeis University.

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