Figuring Out My Dating Goals: Sonnet Crown
One thing I'd like to stop
seeing in profiles is that we don't deserve
dogs. I'm simply not interested
in what anyone deserves. As if I could eat
deserves or enjoy putting my face on a pillow
wondering if that's where your dog puts its
face. Before I die
I just want to keep laughter close. Think
of all the freak accidents in this world.
Would you remember to delete your brother
sister your best friend or your mother from
the apps following catastrophe?
Don't bother answering
like you're the lowest common denominator.
*
Death is the lowest common denominator, and so
on and so on. I've gotten lucky before,
but I think that means the Big One,
the Really Big One, is probably
at my door. Nine out of ten seismologists
agree that there's a megathrust to come,
the likes of which we've never seen before.
A sudden slip on a fault line that will fuck
things up deep in our subduction zone. What
are we afraid of more? The shattering plates, or
the tsunami washing out what once was
civilization, after. What I love most
about earthquakes is that you can't really
see them coming until they're pretty much—
You saw the punchline coming.
Statistically, a lot of dead people
are on the apps. Because I haven't died
I keep flipping that coin and flipping
that coin. The time could be near
or it could be far, but the one thing
I know for sure is that we're getting
closer every day. I don't even know that
thing, but to answer your question, I believe
that's what I'm looking for. It sounds like I just said
nothing, but this is as precise as I can be
while still being honest. What about
you? What will you regret missing
in the fault line's form?
*
You say there won't be time for regret, but one
data point indicates that when the car struck me
on Pont Neuf, I had time to think, Seriously?
before I flew. This is how it happens? Not ow, not wait,
no faces of the ones I love, or hate, no final
whiff of the cinnamon in my coffee, afterimage
of the buggy verdant entrance of my apartment or childhood
or the flickering Seine at night. But I didn't die.
And as the years pile up, I confess I've liked remembering
almost as much as I've liked living. But it's hard
to let time pass and not worry about the passing. To listen
to the world outside the window and not wonder: is that
the storm or the aftermath dripping off the trees—
have I slept through the whole thing?
I love dreaming because I get to feel like I've made
something, and I slept through all the hard parts
of making. And the something I've been visited by
is a story custom-made for me! These are all reasons
people like AI too, in theory. But I’m not the same machine
at the beginning of a dream as I am at the end, or the beginning
of this poem and now, or now and when
you're reading this. Does that matter? There's a single star
review of Brave New World that tells Aldous Huxley
to give up on writing. In a follow-up, the reviewer says,
nvm ur dead im sorry. I'm sorry
that this is the best argument against AI-generated
art that I can think of just now. Maybe
that reviewer's dead. Does it matter?
*
I know it matters. Someone cares if this reviewer—Elena
—is with us, really with us, having mixed feelings about
Macbeth, marking other books by dead authors to-be-read.
But does Elena care about reading a dead author vs. reading
some mash-up by an algorithm trained on the dead
author? And what about the people who care about Elena?
What about when they're dead? Then does it matter if Elena's
dead? Someone's therapist says to go outside
and count the stars if I'm spiraling. Someone's therapist
knows quite well the stars are also dead. So what are we all
leaving behind? I drew three tarot cards last night,
too tired to remember that they represented the past, present,
future. Suddenly this morning I'm anxious to remember
what the third card was, and can't.
I can't remember what the future was, but I know it was
reversed? Still, I don't think nostalgia is the answer
to anything, or that any of us had an innocent past. My parents
ended up together because their stories didn’t
add up in an interrogation room, and marriage
is a punishment. Anything can be. Water, solitude,
chocolate cake, getting everything your heart
desires, the balmy autumn nights getting balmier, the glistening
waves on a receding shoreline. I read somewhere that when
the redwoods disappear, giant dandelions might pop up
in their wake, no longer in the shadows. I read that novel
ecosystems are forming on our plastic debris. Incredible
diversity. I read to comfort myself, and maybe you,
as well? If you can believe this story.
*
I believe everything I read. That's not true. It's more
that I wonder if I should believe everything I read, and
the wondering—is this real?—next to the knowledge
that I should know better, that the book is a made
thing—is where the magic happens. Two opposing
ideas are true. A famous author writes a novel
in which the famous author is dead and a biographer interviews
his ex-wife. In class we learn the author, the living
author, is still married to her. In class, everyone says
he lied. But it was a novel. So it was more honest,
wasn't it? Even biography is constructed.
What I didn't say in class: Maybe
he didn't feel married. I still believe
in an essential truth. A secret. I like being in on it.
I like being in on it, the fabric connecting all
things, the tapestry of life, etc. Knowing
that I'll die is reason enough for me to keep living
usually. I'm not looking for trouble, but I worship
the moon and the cycles I've learned from it, which
probably accounts for my having the most embarrassing
of trauma responses. You know the one I'm talking about.
There are those who flee, those who fight, and there I am,
nodding along with the threat, flattering him. I don't know
if I'm genuinely in it for survival, or if it's the seed in me that says
everything is temporary, says, let's see how things play out
this time. If I live long enough, I hope the moon will save me
from the accumulation of fear itself. I want to accept
the darker sides of things, but when do I stop.
*
I'd like us to stop
seeing each other
at our lowest. You’d
like to keep the dog. Death
is the punchline that did us
part, but not like that. I'm
giving us time to regret things.
In my dreams, everything
still matters. What was
her name? I believe in a future
even though I know
fiction isn't true. It's more
than that. It’s wonder
that we're still in it. Etc.
The Reason
Branches partition the sky
each night I set shadows skittering
their small bodies in the under
brush and above me one brilliant eye
regards me no no many eyes regard me else
why skitter I’m the reason
for their flight from the groomed hedge
I never get a moment alone
Headlights tremble because they
are hiding the humans hurtling
by in their machines there is sometimes
a baby in the machine capable of
nothing except its next meal biting
the cheek of the preferred mother but
any wire monkey could do
Let's be "ourselves" right up to the end
I was circling the block pretending
we were a tragedy and then we were
so something out there must be listening
it's embarrassing to be caught pretending
but from where I stand Star Market is brighter
than both the moon and the sun rising now
ushering another sane day well time’s healing
Is that yesterday's rain
Diana Cao's (she/they) poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Yale Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She has received support from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and she is Just Buffalo Literary Center's 2024 Poetry Fellow, selected by Megan Fernandes. She is a winner of Nimrod International's 2023 Neruda Prize, selected by Tarfia Faizullah, and her debut collection, Slipstream, won the 2024 Berkshire Prize at Tupelo Press, selected by Matthew Rohrer.