Ching-In Chenis a genderqueer Chinese American writer, community organizer, and teacher. Their latest book, Shiny City, was published by Airlie Press in 2025.
Then your head
from lion’s cavern,
all ponytail and swagger.
You know your body,
its capacity for velocity.
My hands weekly
copy dance under wire
lid. Discarded
animal’s bones scrape
to metal. Unworn
black shoes.
Assistant teacher shakes
her head, keeps
me aside.
We had to be better
than boys. Their easy place
in parade route, heavy
legs marking time in cold,
arms burly from drums.
So I fleck and fleck,
pray for strong wrists
in den’s corner.
Watch you,
my best Lovely,
through metal gate
leap from tile to tile,
over your partner’s back,
practicing flight.
spell before you took my wide branched hand
open night bursting black
secret a pepper on your tongue
seed sprout
sky streak
ominous itinerary
diffusing tendril and particle
we unable
to understand black
print we ask
others for shields
from sky dry sheath
breath small
sodden street
damp habit
throat to party full
of stretched noses I have words
I haven’t been
sending over transom
just a small
gathering no kin
to speak of
Structured Breath for a Day with Head Cold
must be love Hot sky flashing
water gathered in glass few days a mechanical
for your scratchy throat animal churned waterfall
upon your windshield We alarmed
and then kept driving A sullen rain
combats each hour as she handles
the wheel To be protected
This business of moving our bodies
despite all the creatures which burn
within a maelstrom to be ferried
into another territory which looks
suspiciously like the one you belong in
Here I say please sit with me
even when water rises
and we worry hands into sea
