Poem by Jennifer S. Cheng

rules of the state                                  
 
1
Instead of inviting people into my home
I planted pointy succulents under the floor

I cleared my throat
but the air was thick as snails

If I felt myself lost again, it was only
so I could make my way
 
2
home. Is my house of plants decaying?
I waited for my couch to be heavy with water
I did not need the promise of arrival
 
3
to let the hours slip away

History recoils like a leaf. Can we churn
it into something
 
4
loving?

I have always been ashamed of something
 
5
The world is an ocean I hear through my house
Migratory traffic sweeping the shore. Descending
 
6
sky all whale and gray. Everything is echo
 
7
To hold a tender cheek of fish under my tongue
and hope for the bones

of a river vanishing into sea. I was tired of falling asleep

I was hurrying to make room in the margins

for me to lie down and rest
In my haste I let the papyrus stems in the hallway go
 
8
parched. I could not leave the house, so I folded
paper, pulling corners
toward my center, soft, until the sun

9
was gone. I felt an urge for home

whereby I meant a word
between two people

When I wrote a letter that said, tell me
a joke, what I meant was
be tender

Jennifer S. Cheng is the author of House A, selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Omnidawn Poetry Book Prize, and Invocation: An Essay (New Michigan Press), an image-text chapbook. A graduate of Brown University, the University of Iowa, and San Francisco State University, she received fellowships and awards from the U.S. Fulbright program, Kundiman, Bread Loaf, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry, lyric essays, and critical writing appear in Tin House, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, The Offing, Entropy, Jacket2, Guernica, and elsewhere. Having grown up in Texas and Hong Kong, she currently lives and teaches in San Francisco. www.jenniferscheng.com

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