Chen Chen

enveloped in a slanket of mystery & dream

procrastinating on being like, a person

when we drive in your car i’m your baby because i can’t drive can’t navigate couldn’t tell you what a car is or will be

the narrator of your lyrical autofiction and the speaker of my narrative docupoem walk into a bar

LAST CALL to submit your manuscript for consideration for the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize! Submittable closes tomorrow- don't wait!

🎯 Prize Details:
- Winning manuscript published by BOA Editions in Spring 2027
- $1,000 honorarium

Brooklyn Poets 2025 End of Year Fundraising Campaign Help us continue cultivating community and access to poetry across the borough and beyond by supporting our end-of-year fundraising campaign today!

It’s the FINAL DAY of our fundraising auction ft. @gabriellebates.bsky.social, @chenchenwrites.bsky.social, Ross Gay, Ariana Reines, @cathylinhche.bsky.social, @taraskurtu.bsky.social, @joseolivarez.bsky.social, Hala Alyan & more! Get your bids in by 10pm ET!

givebutter.com/c/bkp2025/au...

why does every new poem i write feel like the best poem i've ever written, then (all too quickly) the worst poem i've ever written

Thank You by Ross Gay If you find yourself half naked and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing, again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says you are the air of the now and gone, that says all you love will turn to dust, and will meet you there, do not raise your fist. Do not raise your small voice against it. And do not take cover. Instead, curl your toes into the grass, watch the cloud ascending from your lips. Walk through the garden’s dormant splendor. Say only, thank you. Thank you.

... Walk
through the garden’s dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

—Ross Gay

i need a bookstore open from 9pm to 3am, that would just work so well for me

cold day, hot drinks :)

I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.

—David Lynch

Our fundraising auction ft. poem feedback, consultations & more from poets Hanif Abdurraqib, Hala Alyan, @gabriellebates.bsky.social, @cathylinhche.bsky.social, @chenchenwrites.bsky.social, Ross Gay, @joseolivarez.bsky.social, @taraskurtu.bsky.social & more is live! givebutter.com/c/bkp2025/au...

i just had a nutella cappuccino and now i want all coffee to be just that

Zohran Mamdani-style ad reading "i love you to the moon & not back, let’s not come back"

after @chenchenwrites.bsky.social:

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/160539...

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our life.
—Annie Dillard

Well, every day is all there is.
—Joan Didion

@chenchenwrites.bsky.social spotted in my local bookstore!!!
"Explodingly Yours"

I hated childhood
I hate adulthood
And I love being alive

—Mary Ruefle, from “Provenance”

after much consideration, ughhhhhhhhhhh hhh

i have long loved that humble yet bold, bold yet humble "and here I may be of some use."

It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

—Louise Glück, from "October"

love being in a bookstore and they suddenly start playing laura palmer’s theme from twin peaks

My therapist tells me that I need to work on holding onto myself. This is my first therapist. I don’t know what she means. I thought that having myself was not supposed to take any effort.

—Yanyi, from The Year of Blue Water

thinking about this little (vast!) prose poem again

Join @chenchenwrites.bsky.social on Zoom for a special writing workshop! Discover a poetic form using only the letters in your name. We'll explore examples and guide you in creating words and lines. One week from tonight at 7 PM ET!
🎟️ chenchen2025.eventbrite.com?aff=Bsky

Reading poems from When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by @chenchenwrites.bsky.social and feeling so many feels

keep your wonder alive, keep your aliveness alive

the great adventure of living while very very gay

love a crisp fall day with a high of 82°

When someone dies, we go searching for poetry.

But I want elegies while I’m still alive... I want ballads, I want ugly, grating sounds, I want repetition, I want white space... and even center-aligned italicized poems that rhyme, and most of all — feelings.

—Jenny Zhang

something that can be so tough is Everything

Sixth Finch Books Sixth Finch Books

from Rick Barot’s gorgeous new chapbook, The Emperor of the Cut Sleeve, out now from Sixth Finch: sixthfinch.com/store.html