Little girl riding
flying goose, geography
is obedient
Blue Desert
One person believes in torture
While another person does not
A believer always wins
A non-believer does not
Every day piles of pebbles are being tortured beneath the sun
Every day a desert remains intact
Every day you do the best for health
You do your best to keep your body alive
Pounding is a part of it
Feelings of irrelevance are at the heart of it
You go searching for a flirtatious encounter
When the smog clears, instant arousal
Love is two-fold, but it could also be more
You want more, but that is a luxury.
You want so badly that you cannot fall asleep
You drink a sleeping potion to help you sleep
You dream you are in a town with blue hills
You eat at a foreign restaurant
You are wearing a blue dress patterned with daisies
In the dream you are a little girl
You have no choice but to act like a little girl
You are eating a peach
You are holding tightly onto a string that is tied to the sun
You let go of the string and feel separation anxiety
Then you wake up alone in a room
You are one pebble in a pile of pebbles
You imagine yourself as a boulder
And bask in the afternoon sun
To Do
Make toast for a tree
Sleep one thousand years, delay
gratification
Soft Pornography
A woman rides a man
for 45-minutes on a loop
on a small CRT TV
in a small room
for medical purposes
fake injections
work better
than fake pills
but fake surgeries
are the most powerful
A warm pill
evaporates a soul
dictates the arrangement
of particles
inside an apple
fed to the woman
with too much pressure
on her head
The dirt
makes life more doomy
an end is both near
& far
A daughter
who wants dramatic
visual effects
marries a man who eats
40,000 tons of food
in one day
then shatters a bridge
with his teeth
What looks like peaks
of a marriage
are hard clouds in formation
according to the
cloud appreciation society
Not all clouds have meanings
behind them
not all visions
are pure
Like looking up at the sky
but seeing the sea
roiling
What is the secret
to popularity
in a chorus
of saints?
What appears striking
from a distance
is a lazy
stinking animal
marching towards the scent
of distant rain
whose own scent rapidly
delivers change
in a smooth era what a smooth &
violent era
Christine Shan Shan Hou is a non-binary poet and visual artist. Publications include The Joy and Terror are Both in the Swallowing (After Hours Editions 2021) Community Garden for Lonely Girls (Gramma Poetry 2017),“I'm Sunlight” (The Song Cave 2016), C O N C R E T E S O U N D (2011) a collaborative artists’ book with Audra Wolowiec, and Accumulations (Publication Studio, Jank Editions 2010) featuring drawings by Hannah Rawe. Their poems and artwork have been featured in numerous journals and anthologies. They have received awards from The Key West Literary Seminar, The Flow Chart Foundation/Academy for American Poets, and Naropa University.