yiqithings
Yiqi Things
Poetry, Flash Fiction, and other Art
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To buy fore
Tasmin saunters
carelessly
down the street,
staring at the cracks
where wild flowers
reach for the sun.
I hold a dying candle
scented with rotted
marigolds and honeysuckle;
I think there resides
a cardiac drum
its skin stretched
to beyond what's healthy
or normal
or reasonable.
-- yiqi 23 April 2024 9:31 pm
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a tone ment
Bury me in the pit of your pendulum. Cover my calluses, my fringe benefits, seal the subatomic holes with honey. Pluck my breath away, ignore retractions and quips of doubt that when morning comes, my mind will be a blank canvas.
Gone with the mural of misanthropic tendencies, gone with the claw marks from lycanthrope hunting parties.
Hammer me down into paste, spread me across the lap of your ambition, and roll me up like a crepe for a late night snack. Your fingertips keep searching for the door to the sanctuary, the obscured cellar, the panel hidden under the foyer rug.
But the lights are extinguished, and the floor could give way to succubus revelry to drain you of your determination.
Each night you erode the jagged edges of the borderlands, and you gnaw at the blackened steeples of neglected chapels. What are you looking for? What will you find when the gate to the altar is unlocked, or without armed guards?
Will you bow down and supplicate yourself to a new paradigm? Or will you build a throne with your bare hands and strike a match to melt down all the scar tissue masquerading as self-punishment?
~!~
The above came to me while listening to Lexie Liu and reassessing the never-ending mental pro-con lists.
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why didn't i stop
too much NACL
I didn't see until I
started chewing
but I was so hungry
I just added cold chicken broth
and now I must drink
water
and more water
to flush it all out
of my mouth
and my cells and
I'm so full.
-- yiqi 16 April 2024 6:54 pm
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And in the meadow there none
He bisected the ledge
of almost there and almost gone.
His feet tap-danced the bass line
of soul-stirring melodies.
His hands were solid
when he sandwiched mine,
his exhalations warm
with baiting invitations.
How then does he manage
to slip through my fingers
each time I step up to bat?
He strikes me out
with curve balls,
or tags me out in the outfield.
The idea of meeting him
at home plate is more real
than if we were to ever share
another handshake.
-- yiqi 10 April 2024 11:36 pm
~!~
These words came to me while watching The Accountant (Gavin O'Connor, 2016).
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first time wrapped and glazed
and in the end of my believing
the road would be repaved
the crowd cacophony would quiet down
my toes tripped a wire
just before the last trial
and either some limbs will go
catapulting through the jungle
or sharpened branches
will lance the water sacks
atop our pack animals
and in the end it won't make
a difference
where we build a fire.
-- yiqi 5 April 2024 8:59 pm
~!~
These words came to me while watching Predator (John McTiernan, 1987) on DVD.
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To Have and To Fold
His origin story began in the heavens out of reach of time and space. His relocation from levity to heavy breathing came reluctantly and without announcement.
He spiraled down to this mortal plane as though nudged off the edge of a vast celestial stage at the hands of a fickle overlord.
He interrupted my morning tea, disrupted my sleep, stretched apart my shadow like a creature shedding his skin and searching for new feet.
He played with my hair before slicing strands of it off to make kindling for fire, filling the asphalt arena with acrid smoke and the scent of stale remorse.
I could hardly move when he looked at me. And all my words slid out like lemon drops.
I grew to love the unpredictable cadence of his appearances. The more I saw the less certain of whether or not I was dreaming.
-- yiqi 2 April 2024 12:13 am
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pact des paques
sink into the base boards
there's something wrong with them
sew up the fissures along his quadriceps
there's something turning to ash with them
or perhaps it's the chalk
the ground black pepper and cumin
dipped in water
into a paste
became paint
for the glyph
adorning the ceiling.
-- yiqi 31 March 2024 10:06 pm
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One Last Persuasion
Chartreuse chewing gum, winter mint or spearmint, it didn't matter to him as long as it was the color of his favorite highlighter. A new pack of gum may have been his last request before his last two nights on earth. The leaders of the new moon instructed him to make sure he could summon many mouthfuls of saliva with minimal effort during the voyage to their new home. The chartreuse gum was supposed to help in this endeavor. They didn't tell him why other than a cryptic reference to "sometimes, it is too dry during transport."
He didn't ask for clarification. The gum would have satisfied his final experiences on the planet had it not been for a chance glance outside the balcony window of his residence one night. He saw a young woman with dark hair down to her elbows holding a blue spoon in one hand and a vanilla icing sponge cake on a plate in the other. She brought the plate up to her nose and smelled the cake before plunging the spoon into it.
He watched her take spoonful after spoonful until there was only icing left on the utensil, which she promptly licked clean. At that moment she looked up and saw him observing her from his fifth floor window. She stood there still holding the blue spoon in one hand and the plate in the other. He popped a stick of gum in his mouth, started chewing, and thought about ordering a vanilla icing sponge cake too.
She should have been too far away for him to see her face clearly and to hear her speak. And yet, he saw her pink lips give way to a grin and heard the words distinctly, "There's one more slice of cake in the ice box where the condors congregate."
And he wondered if the leaders of the new moon would notice or care.
Original pic cred: Mike Kononov (Mikofilm), unsplash
~!~
The first part of this piece of flash fiction came to me when I was listening to this Deftones song and watching someone contemplate doing long division by hand, if everyone might actually live in slightly different iterations of the same reality, or maybe nothing at all.
You can't know what someone is thinking if they don't tell you, you can only guess. And with an overactive imagination like mine and whether or not something is making me feel like I messed up, it tends towards the utterly random or the extreme.
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tired of this ship
woke up on the wrong
side of the bed?
try waking up on the wrong
side of the week.
save your nodding
because of where interplanetary bodies
are docking their warships,
personal whipping cream rockets.
this song grows too long
the interludes too brief
where is the next galaxy
eager for the cellular division
hammering away
inside this bag of bones?
why is every call sign
to jubilation
met with a reversal of adoration?
why does every recognition
of merriment
lead to a dead end?
-- yiqi 26 March 2024 5:55 pm
~!~
These words came to me while listening to Linkin Park.
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I finished reading House of Leaves the other night. So now I'm reading this book, and then going to resume Jane Eyre.
I've been grossed out by the various horror books I've read over the years, and texts like The Picture of Dorian Gray has filled me with nervous anticipation, but they haven't made me afraid and on the edge of my seat or mattress like House of Leaves did in certain parts.
From the Psychiatrist
"Me: I have this obsessive worry about not inconveniencing others...
"Psychiatrist: Sometimes the best thing to do with people who would never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether... You need to accept that different people will have different responses to the same conversation... If you have a strict superego, the act of being punished eventually becomes gratifying... But the satisfaction from eating doesn't last very long."
-- I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (Baek Sehee, 10, 13, 17, 19).
"Psychiatrist: And the world is full of so much suffering that it's the easiest thing to find people who are having a harder time than you are... When you're having a hard time, it's natural to feel like you're having the hardest time in the world. And it's not selfish to feel that way. Just because certain conditions in your life are relatively better, it doesn't mean you're better off in general... you shouldn't torture yourself with questions like, Why can't I be happy with what I have?" (28-30).
"Psychiatrist: Your mood is extremely important. It determines how you interpret random events of your life" (45).
"Psychiatrist: ...you might find more satisfaction in cherishing the fact that you've someone you like. Once you start valuing the time you have together, does it really matter what kind of relationship it is?" (58).
"Me: My new friend also told me I should try being alone from time to time. To not rely on others so much. She said she had a period of being alone where she eventually came to the point of not caring if someone loved her or not, and she was totally fine" (61).
"Psychiatrist: You need to keep findind your own ways to comfort yourself" (63).
"...sadness is the path of least resistance, the most familiar and close-at-hand emotion I have" (83).
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Bedtime Stories
Trying not to scroll through reddit
before sleep means reading
from at least one book.
And with these myopic eyes,
the book is held just in front of your face.
Sometimes you don't get a good grip
because the book weighs a hefty bit
and it falls and hits you.
-- yiqi 19 March 2024 11:50 am
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shallow green
flatten your palms
onto the linoleum kitchen
take the stainless steel knife
the one with the blue handle
and spread the raspberry jam
all over the crunchy leftovers
stacked in glass boxes
in the refrigerator
that'll be lunch
that'll be dinner
that'll be snacks in btwn classes
if you can muster
enough strength
to cloak the voice
asking why
anyone would put
sheets of carbohydrates
in the refrigerator
they're supposed to go
in the cupboard
like all the other foods
that sounded better
than they tasted.
-- yiqi 15 March 2024 10:54 pm
~!~
I have no idea why the first couple of lines came to me, but they did when I was listening to Deep Green by Christian Kuria.
youtube
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so that's what's true
there's a quiet consideration
in the twilight of the overanalyzing gods
where they pause
and take a refreshment
of wine or tea
and a snack of crisp skin or fragrant seeds
they discuss
they quarrel
they reminisce
they project
their uncertainties onto outcomes
we wait for their deliberations
we nail bulletins to our foreheads
that tell the future but
we can only ever read someone else's
we make a fire for cooking
we wash our hands of trash
and in between stages of sleep,
we bury our dreams and wishes
under the skin of the undecided.
-- yiqi 10 March 2024 1:17 am
~!~
The first couple of lines came to me while watching Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and after reading this passage in House of Leaves: "Though few will ever agree on the meaning of the configuration or the absence of style in that place, no one has yet to disagree that the labyrinth is still a house. Therefore the question soon arises whether or not it is someone's house. Though if so whose? Whose was it or even whose is it? Thus giving voice to another suspicion: could the owner still be there?" (Mark Z. Danielewski, 121).
#yiqithings#yiqithings poetry#inspired by movies#inspired by books#under the skin#je ne veux pas etre toute seule#donnez-moi quelqu'un a aimer
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Fairytale Motif
She crossed the boundary without meaning to, and now the sentinels will start chasing her. Hiding behind boulders, among party revelers, between fortune tellers' stalls will only work for so long before they spot the iridescent particles of the shadows she leaves behind in the wake of her departure.
She traverses to your front porch, bringing a basket of soft, sweet peaches as an offering. You were already waiting at the threshold of your camouflaged retreat. Warmth of ten suns burn away the fear of discovery, a receptive audience you give to her quivering form.
She let her forked tail detach and fall to the floor. Sharpened tongue and twisted shears clatter to the glass hearth. You chisel away the uncertainty she wears like a cravat to asphyxiate the hope that always escapes.
In turn, she feeds you a choral immersion, a new set of lenses for the full visible light spectrum. But you close your eyes lest your visions oversaturate, overshare, and confess too much too soon.
You cradle her head like a nest for eaglets. You hold it like a golden orb of secrets with nowhere to spill and quick to upset. She marks your mouth with the flesh of the white peach. Ambrosia slides down into a mirror you keep to collect all her memories of you, so no one can steal them and tell a different story.
~!~
These words came to me while listening to Ghost (Room 93 version), The Devil's in the Details, Tongue Tied, Affection, It Takes Two, Days, Dive, Fairytale, and thinking about The Book Leo's vlog about fairytale retellings as well as the last several hours.
I live in my head, and I didn't want to be there after my misadventure during daytime hours, so I put in a request for a substantial distraction and redirection of cerebral resources. What was dispatched to address my concerns did precisely what I needed it to do.
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no excuses that i could conjure
i concede this round
i am no better than those
whose actions compel
me to throw snide remarks aloud
in the safety of my transportation device
i see it now
and so have about a dozen others
i've just done
what i'd scold others for doing
i am no better
i just thought i was
because i'd have a perfectly sound
explanation for some of
my heavy machinery operating procedures
until i don't
because I just did
what i cannot fathom how i did.
-- yiqi 5 March 2024 6:03 pm
#yiqithings#poetry#yiqithings poetry#inspired by real life#no idea how that happened#that just happened#i just did that#noooooo
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all the good is gone
tell me the dawn
will eat her children
and make better earthlings
out of their carcasses
feed me sunlight-lies
about promises
and possibilities
endless only as far down
as the covered walkways extend
fetch me a pail of green
water between roots of tan
and leaves of broadening chicanery
and then may i finally
sleep soundly enough
to have dreams again
the ones where i'm not back in school
forgetting there's a test
i haven't studied for.
-- yiqi 1 March 2024 7:26 pm
~!~
This poem came to me while trying not to think about my life but also thinking about how quickly the sense of "okay" can be utterly destroyed and replaced with free-falling into an abyss that smells like burnt potato skins.
#yiqithings#poetry#yiqithings poetry#inspired by real life#inspired by movies#every time i feel the least bit good the bad comes in
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Already late February
I know my place
in this castle five miles up ahead
lacks the grace
with which you swish around
in your satin gown
anchored by the stays
under that lilac blouse
but I still watch you
powder your nose
and try on ten bracelets
until you find the right fit
with three fewer pearls
to enclose your wrist
perfectly.
-- yiqi 25 February 2024 1:03 pm
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