CHRISTINE SHAN SHAN
HOU x3
You Should See Me...
You should see the amount of meat I can pull from my teeth
You should see how I grind my teeth to dust
You should see how I dust my English furniture
You should see me wandering in a perpetual state of childhood
You should see how quickly I will invite myself into your shower
You should see how I act when I wear celebrity skin
You should see me pose beneath the arch of interminable doubt
You should see my white lies brimming with hope for the future
You should see how I turn into a sex fiend and then a plant overnight
You should see how possessive I am when it comes to my organs
You should see how evenly I can distribute pain throughout my body
You should see the man I hired to live inside my head
You should see how hot he is
You should see how I cry into my handkerchief with hardcore gentleness
You should see the brightness of my temporary shyness shining out of my asshole
You should see me as soon as you open the door
I will be napping beneath the daffodils
Manic Pixie Dream Boy
Me and my bff tell each other
that having sex with your boyfriend while thinking
about your other boyfriend is not cheating
It opens a portal to self-discovery
To truly see someone as other than your boyfriend
Takes time and money
To unbutton all the buttons
Untie all the laces
To truly see these acts of undoing as deception
Takes patience and ketamine
Nothing is sexier than watching a horror movie trailer
With a jump scare at the end
Nothing is sexier than a boy deeply listening to me
And my opinions about music and literature
I want someone to want me so bad
That it forces their eyes shut
And bow their shaved head down in reverence
My friend Patrick was troubled when
He found out that the girl he liked on the internet
Liked blink-182
When blink-182 comes on shuffle
I don’t skip ahead
I am not embarrassed
We are who we are
We can’t all be who we want to be
That would be like like polyamory minus the rewards
The earth minus its humbleness
The violence minus the men
Ice Cream Poem
Feed me a little ice cream and I will
Get down on all fours
Place a heavy glass pane on my
My naked back
And make my way towards you like
A whimpering table
Lay your instruments upon my glass skin
To produce your sacrilegious sound
Play them through speakers
As you drive through the neighborhood
How much longer must I wait until you
Fuck me in an ice cream truck
How much longer must I wait for your
ice cream to to melt down to the tip of my
disappearing
cone
Christine Shan Shan Hou is a poet and visual artist based in New Jersey. Their publications include Playdate (White Columns, 2022); The Joy and Terror are Both in the Swallowing (After Hours Editions 2021); Community Garden for Lonely Girls (Gramma Poetry 2017); and “I'm Sunlight” (The Song Cave 2016). Their artwork has been exhibited at White Columns and Deli Gallery in New York City.
https://whitecolumns.org/publications/wc58-christine-shan-shan-hou/
https://www.afterhourseditions.com/the-joy-and-terror
IG: @christinehou + @hypothetical_arrangements