FIVE: Poems

物の哀れ

before you flew to Alaska, you told me
something beautiful about airports,
and I understood what you meant

I’ve realized that there’s trees in Hong Kong
and there’s neon lights in Alaska,
and that everywhere you go has everything

I’m beginning to think the only places
you can feel nostalgia for
are the convenience stores
that are on the threshold of too close and too far,
so you only go there sometimes,
and everydayness becomes a special occasion

you will leave before Christmas
and it will be cold where you’re going
but forever isn’t a long time

I know that you aren’t afraid
of the sad-but-beautiful feeling
so I will never worry about you

have you ever been places, where
on some days it rains, and the rain
doesn’t feel like water? because it’s acid
I’ve felt acid rain, and it doesn’t hurt
it’s sting-y and feels profoundly like something,
rather than feeling like hard air

When I flew home from Seoul,
we flew over your home, but I sat
in a middle seat, so I couldn’t look down

you told me that the world
was beautiful again,
and I believed you again

Christian M Patterson is 23 years old. He's from Auburn WA and lives in Portland OR. When he isn't writing poetry, he is watching wrestling. Find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

FOUR: Poems

Santa Cruz

in a beach house, with a big ‘U’ shape
made out of white couches, between the ocean
balcony and a minibar, and photos of families
I don’t know, everywhere

I’d like many people to walk on the beach
with me, and look at the burning with neon wharf
and look at the Pacific and feel smaller than ever
I especially wish it was you

I think about hugging you on a sidewalk
and how grazing your side
with my hand when I pull away
is the most erotic way I can touch someone

I’m remembering a facebook conversation
I had with Morgan when we were in Korea
I said
           the future is scary but
           that’s why it’s beautiful :)
and she said
           I guess that’s true.
           The big world out there
           is the scariest part

you don’t need to think about space
to feel infinite in your smallness,
you need to think about the Pacific,
because specificity is more interesting
and the Incas, the Hawaiian Empire,
Indonesia, China, Japan never touched space

I go to the beach in the middle of the night
and the cracking waves sounds like
distant thunder, and in the distance,
Monterrey looks like a string
of Christmas lights, signifying everything
beyond the curvature of the Earth

Christian M Patterson is 23 years old. He's from Auburn WA and lives in Portland OR. When he isn't writing poetry, he is watching wrestling. Find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

THREE: Poems

Oxiclean

I loaded my laundry into the washer
then went to the darkest corner
of the parking lot and packed my cigarettes

I saw you cross the street
you said can I have a cigarette, I said yes
you said you pack your cigarettes loudly

I placed a cigarette between your lips
I said do you need a light
and I handed you my silver lighter
you lit my cigarette first
I made a tunnel around your hand
with mine, to block out the wind

you said are you walking home
which seemed like a weird question
to someone standing in the darkest corner
of a laundromat parking lot
I said no and you said I’m walking
to my car, I was at my friend’s house

we talk about school and laundry
you say a lot of soft words
and as you walk away
we keep talking, as if something
was dragging us apart through space,
and we didn’t know why

Christian M Patterson is 23 years old. He's from Auburn WA and lives in Portland OR. When he isn't writing poetry, he is watching wrestling. Find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

TWO: Poems

the Day after Christmas

1

The bar down the street, and WalMart,
are both at capacity, and they were
the day before Christmas too

we hang out in Zak’s driveway, with a blow-up
Santa riding a motorcycle, a reindeer
driving a tractor, Snoopy in an aeroplane
with ‘Season’s Greetings’ on the side

I’m only in a purple sweatshirt
and black long johns
and the air feels sharply cold

last night, I drove by the space where
my high school used to be
A new high school, with the same name
is in the same space

2

You are in New York right, in a knit cap and scarf,
watching your brother’s boyfriend play Skyrim,
and you don’t need me to show you the world

I remember Sarah in high school, in her white
tank top and bike shorts, I’d also jokingly tell her
that I would show her the world
and before I came back for Christmas
she sent me a wedding invitation in the mail

I imagine you now, looking
off a fire escape in Manhattan,
even though that’s probably inaccurate,
I’m romanticizing you in my mind
while I write this on my phone
in the North Auburn Taco Bell drive thru

Christian M Patterson is 23 years old. He's from Auburn WA and lives in Portland OR. When he isn't writing poetry, he is watching wrestling. Find him on Twitter and Tumblr.

ONE: Poems

you remind me of three different Weezer songs

I want to learn Chinese
Logograms can never pretend
they are not metaphors
I want to watch steam rise
from a large bowl of rice
I want to know
why geography is alive
I want to know why I am writing a paper
on shaman when you already are one

I want to visit Arizona with you,
because you think it’s beautiful
and will be beautiful
Arizona makes you think
of the color pink
Arizona makes me think
of the color orange

I forgot how important meter is
until I heard you speak for the first time
in years, and you inflect your voice
in a way no one else does
I forgot the way you crinkle your nose
when you say some words

I ask how you say ‘I love you’ in Cantonese
I copy how you say it the best that I can
I don’t say it to anyone though, just the air

It takes a third of the time
for you to fly to Hong Kong
than it’ll take for me to get to America
I think someday I will move south,
but not to Arizona
and probably not to Hong Kong

but when I move,
write me the most interesting words
that you have ever seen, then soak
the envelope in rain water
until it’s on the verge of dissolving
and send the letter to me and teach me

Christian M Patterson is 23 years old. He's from Auburn WA and lives in Portland OR. When he isn't writing poetry, he is watching wrestling. Find him on Twitter and Tumblr.