photo.voltaic



(corona)

like atmospheric flashes,
rare, luminous spirits
of you appear in my
thoughts.  past four years, 
i've been crawling in blue 
tunnels of college.  this 
full-moon night is damp, 
tinged with cold, same as when
you broke me, late fall in 
southern california.  after
months of snapping like warring 
fish.  tonight, your karmic replica,
my lover of two years, is leaving, 
pushing ajar the same exit door as 
you did, vanishing in the middle 
of the most thrilling, entangled
plot.  no faith in a possible 
resolution.  neither of you 
ever assumed hate as readily 
as i do, much as one detests 
the sea after near drowning.


(galvanic)

naked skin.  sexuality like 
a rush of abrupt motion, the
secret delight of sticking a
finger into the electric outlet.
we were sixteen, hiding in your 
bedroom closet, poised to detect
the front door bursting open, keys
ringing.  you smelled intensely of 
fresh soap and laundry.  i was already 
coated in sweat from after-school
sports.  we would be dripping in all 
ways by the time i escaped, demurely
slipping out the entrance.  some 
afternoons, we watched tv, while 
you unbuttoned my red-striped vest worn 
just for that activity.  in trouble, you 
came to my bedroom window, knocking 
cats from the fence.  months earlier, lying 
in a park after college entrance exams, 
you admitted you hadn't been kissed before. 


(solarization)

i've developed a phobia of such intimacy 
that flashburns onto my photoplate, so 
much that it becomes a stop wash.  you 
said you had something important to say 
one night, took me out on a walk, not far.
the moon full of possibilities, hanging 
overhead as it does tonight.  you said, 
"i think i love you."  over the swell 
and wane of moons, desire grew as high as 
the new mountains in my belly.  your hill 
eroded, gravel coming off in all directions.
one day, you vanished, without words, 
without warning, as if i'd imagined 
climbing you, tasting your crown of clouds, 
your forest sanctuaries, your uneven slopes.
everthing fell away in the descent: arms, 
legs, heart, liver ... the centers of desire, 
until your brain remained.  it plotted to 
overthrow your fondness for my mouth, my laughs, 
my curves.  as did a thousand-person army in
the likeness of your mother.  after long hours
in the family restaurant, she saw us and said
i was a whore, insolent, disdained in every culture.
you didn't combat this battering ram; you fled, 
started building the great wall of china.


(actinology)

i am thinking of this, tonight, even as 
my lover is slipping out.  he says that he 
needs years alone, afraid to tell me that 
he doesn't want to confront the armies of 
beetles arrayed against him, a battlezone 
built by both of us.  like you, he imagines
solitude as the ultimate expression of man,
underestimating the inborn desire for touch.
both of you believe that every desire seeds
and ends within your own shrouded groves.  
i can hardly breathe sometimes, weighted by 
indelible moments, trapped by the precise 
movements of his clockwork, ticking to 
his own internal works.  like everyone 
who is conceived under a new moon.  within 
four years, i could never think of you 
without desire to scar.  you graduated
to your hard-won solitude in an institute of 
technology, immersed in the study of physics.
such precision, the science of leaving a lover.



--jennifer crystal chien