Michael Chang

freedom 18

That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.—Death, in The Appointment in Samarra

my therapist says i look very tense, i say have you seen the clowns i work with⁠, three stooges⁠, and a GOAT, transcendental oriental. i give up the confederacy for some bubble tea, my comfort, my carnage. verse daily does not mean what i thought it meant, germs of desire, show me the goods, mucinex monster, stop putting boys on pedestals, boys are shit, we’ve heard enough from them, dirty grunts and quick tempers, they need to be quiet for millennia. they compliment my almond eyes, do you know how much water it takes to grow an almond, i am chaste and blushing, cute cute cute, kawaii kawaii kawaii, put this on, they zip me up, they say i can be cool & cute, i say you mean like sweet & sour pork. they don’t know how i live, they short-circuit my time machine, they jinx my rabbit’s foot, they pin me to the wall, they break my skin with their incisors, their vestigial wings twitching, their legs thrashing, they kiss up and kick down, they tinker with my machinery of death, they siphon my humanity like enron, their concern only a hoax, angels dancing on a pin. unmoored from the ground, untethered to reality, they fit in my curved palm, much too young, their seed modest, bitter nectar sloshing in their mouth, they practice their pout, fix their handsome bangs. i turn the tables, for once i ask a whiteboy, can i touch your hair, he leans in and i am in the chapel reciting our vows. orchids remind me of singapore, and sean, he is a financier now, can we pick up where we left off. still, sorry, i wish i could but, these boys build cathedrals, their mouths taste like whiskey and rocky mountain oysters. all is forgiven.

Michael Chang (they/them) hopes to win the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant one day. Michael strongly suspects that they were born in the wrong decade. A recovering vegan, their favorite ice cream flavor was almost renamed due to scandal. Their writing has been published or is forthcoming in Q/A Poetry, Yes Poetry, Typo Mag, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Bending Genres, Heavy Feather Review, Cabildo Quarterly, Neon Garden, Yellow Medicine Review, The Conglomerate, Kissing Dynamite, Little Rose, Milk + Beans, and elsewhere.  They are the proud recipient of a Brooklyn Poets fellowship. They poet to feel alive.