Tim Yu is the winner of the Vincent Chin Memorial Chapbook Award for his collection Journey to the West, which appears as part of the Winter 2006 issue of Barrow Street. He has also published poems in 2nd Avenue Poetry, SHAMPOO, and Interlope; his criticism has appeared in Chicago Review, Meanjin, and The Poetry Project Newsletter; and he blogs at tympan (http://www.tympan.blogspot.com/). He grew up in the Chicago area and now lives in Chicago and in Toronto, where he teaches at the University of Toronto.
San Francisco
Here what happens
is a downspout loop, a
relevance fluster,
some 105 zones
of union: buy
a cretin for your
rumble room.
On the TV with no
thickness, each eye
a different blond. You
think you’re please
and thank you,
cleft palate,
cracking lip.
Tipping Point
Yeah how ye
little hills
gird wave grass
off of out
a dark end swing up
sets the brakes
of matrimony
Let’s say you were a substitute, loosed by gravel, wood cut. You’d do something like the sound on the back of a hand or dollar.
Be that.
Missing links makes you thinks. Or sausage and egg for breakfast, pooling with the tilting table, in a pleasant town with no used-car lot.
It’s as if po
easy over air
makes pants hang
dry on line
Dub race a
rude repose
or geld each
bridge, each
rain-out band
Then you’re a wall of pidgin, being sure to tongue each hole.
Pay up.
What’s under your hat can’t be had but rises staggered, sickle high: own salt. It’s possible this is your station.
I’ve discovered a way around the soft voice that finds itself in my throat.
In pied state you
must walk fact
big ape tears
slip sliding up
You don’t list
miss or mate
but do by pend
what holds each went
Face it: you shouldn’t wear those. Each ear and waist is a tipping point, apostolic or aloof.
Arthur’s mac and cheese creeps westward.
He’s like a pylon, ground or strike.
The Magnificent Mile
Some ether fell
down on my
hardwood floor
pockmarking the chessboard
on which the pizza was baking
Drop into the city
anytime you feel like
sweetness, a sugar-cone
likeness in the mail-
slot in the door
Skunky Hour
Hey ladies—I’m scared
of the common cold.
Select man at
the gate, press to continue.
It’s like cat power
sometimes, being all
alone in the middle.
I’m the dean of
clean. Go hermit
on that stripey ass.
When no one’s here
I’m quiet like a dog.
Elephant & Castle [19]
Your raygun name
is a sour berry,
a hanger-on.
That backwater
pint wouldn’t cut
a finch. Is it tough
enough for action
is what I’m asking.
Every barber-can
Smith & Jerry
thinks he’s got us
up a mudchute.
Soak it, chalk
it up to crossing
castles at the gooey
end of the street.
© 2007 Tim Yu
