SEAN CHO AYRES
if you still want to talk
winning poem of our 2020-2021 Writing Contest
about sad things I’ll tell you the story
of the fawn that found me on the road side
when the gravel was covered with orange leaves
The blackberries we found and ate in fistfuls
when we couldn’t sleep How he became
my houseguest and ate through the tablecloth
I’ll tell you how the snow came in November
how I scraped it away with a hunter’s knife
Pardon my bad table manners
Sorry I’m no good at this What if there
are no new worlds and we jumped into
the water and never came out Our shadows
would lay flat on the river mud And no one
could know who we belonged to
Previously published in The Journal
Spare and crystalline, the enjambed breathlessness of “if you still want to talk” reflects a mythical light over the pandemic reader’s upturned reality. Without periods, its thirteen lines of almost-sonnet are earnest in their attempt to rescue the idea of “new worlds” and the memory of “who we belonged to.” — Yanyi, Cathy Linh Che (2020-2021 Poetry Judges)
Will you think less
of me when I tell you all my what if’s
are ordinary I’ve already spent
this months powerball winnings
ten times over Big apartment
on the top floor of a tall building
in a big city with fancy restaurants
the kind where I can’t pronounce
half the menu so I just order
the bolognese When I die I want
my body shoved into a space tube
and shot at the sun It’s not as expensive
as you would think once you consider
that cost of more traditional options
My grandfather and I went
coffin shopping and he came
to the conclusion that there
is no good way to be dead
so he swore off dying That
was ten years ago and he’s kept
that promise ever since I wouldn’t want
to go to my own funeral It would be
an odd affair No coffin No urn
Few people Maybe where my grave
should have been they’d leave a picture
of the Chicago skyline view the penthouse
or even my framed lottery ticket Maybe on
that day when my grandfather is buttoning
his best black shirt after pulling
its wrinkless form out of a dry cleaning bag
the scientists in Kazan will have
finally cloned the woolly mammoth
and there will be a video on the news
about the furred boy taking his first steps
that would something interesting to talk
about over the catered room temperature
pasta salads There’s so much out there
that I can’t imagine wanting
An Ars Poetica Where Poems Can’t Do Anything
This poem is a trap. As you are trying to understand,
the metaphor of it all the windows are being paint
shut. New notches are hacked into keys. Here’s something to keep you
company: you’re a five leaf clover so no one admires
your brilliance. Now you’re Keats, just having dropped out
of med school: the world is yours! You want to write poems
about the trees releafing, or the moon instructing the tides to eat
up the sand of your neighbor’s beach house but there has already
been too much said about that. Since the book about bird calls
is silent, the TV is on, even though the African grey parrot can mimic
the sound of keys and can tell its own jokes to pass the time; right now,
while a seagull chokes on a condom wrapper, the robots we built
are building other robots who are not too fond of us. Somewhere else
at a livestock auction house three cities over from Des Moines
three businessmen are fixing the prices for broiler chickens, and
there’s nothing we can do.
Sean Cho A. is the author of “American Home” (Autumn House 2021) winner of the Autumn House Publishing chapbook contest. His work can be future found or ignored in Copper Nickel, Pleiades, The Penn Review, The Massachusetts Review, Nashville Review, among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California Irvine and the Associate Editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal. Find him @phlat_soda