"Untitled" by Jing Lin
sestina for the boy who might have loved the ghost of me by Catherine Weiss
my first god was mrs. martin. i prayed
her seating chart would place me by my crush
& almost every month - glory! - in her hands
this miracle would occur. she understood heaven.
in fifth grade, there were so many ways to drown.
lust & love drawn in on the same haunted
tide. i would sometimes fantasize about haunting
him. to literally die & become a ghost. i remember praying
i'd get sick or (instantaneously) killed or drowned
& then i'd return to visit my now-very-sorry crush,
surprise him on the walk home from the bus. heaven
is being desirable, just once to have the upper hand.
one whole afternoon we spent touching hands
when mrs. martin assigned us to square dance. haunting
memories dressed up in pit-sweat baggy tees - heaven
is do-si-do-ing without having to admit you're into it. i don't pray
out loud, though i always seem to get what i wish for. my crush
grabbed my child tits three years later. drowning
only took a squeeze. one way to kill desire is to drown
it. we grant boys our love & also clever hands.
but i'd already grown up enough to be crushed,
already become a roadside thing, a haunted
pelt, the dullest quillbag, ponytail prey
on a tarnished bed, sourest of heavens.
i made my second god a sensation like heaven,
encouraging every disappointed love to drown
in the next fixation, whatever happens when a prayer
meets sweat. a wrist, a knee, dimple, hand,
brow, temple. i have always been a little haunted
by the effort to seduce myself in the name of a crush.
at the pool party, i remember we drank cokes, crushed
the cans with airwalks and pencil tips. in actual heaven
maybe you wouldn’t have to die first to haunt
a boy or two. in my honey tea-steeped dream, i drown
them all & wake up forgiving everybody's hands.
i don't need a new god. just periodic shallow floods. i pray
fondly to the landscape of a finished crush. a drowned
heaven, easy-swaying seaweed trees & mute crab-handed
men. haunted bubbles drifting skyward, tiny breaths of prayer.
her seating chart would place me by my crush
& almost every month - glory! - in her hands
this miracle would occur. she understood heaven.
in fifth grade, there were so many ways to drown.
lust & love drawn in on the same haunted
tide. i would sometimes fantasize about haunting
him. to literally die & become a ghost. i remember praying
i'd get sick or (instantaneously) killed or drowned
& then i'd return to visit my now-very-sorry crush,
surprise him on the walk home from the bus. heaven
is being desirable, just once to have the upper hand.
one whole afternoon we spent touching hands
when mrs. martin assigned us to square dance. haunting
memories dressed up in pit-sweat baggy tees - heaven
is do-si-do-ing without having to admit you're into it. i don't pray
out loud, though i always seem to get what i wish for. my crush
grabbed my child tits three years later. drowning
only took a squeeze. one way to kill desire is to drown
it. we grant boys our love & also clever hands.
but i'd already grown up enough to be crushed,
already become a roadside thing, a haunted
pelt, the dullest quillbag, ponytail prey
on a tarnished bed, sourest of heavens.
i made my second god a sensation like heaven,
encouraging every disappointed love to drown
in the next fixation, whatever happens when a prayer
meets sweat. a wrist, a knee, dimple, hand,
brow, temple. i have always been a little haunted
by the effort to seduce myself in the name of a crush.
at the pool party, i remember we drank cokes, crushed
the cans with airwalks and pencil tips. in actual heaven
maybe you wouldn’t have to die first to haunt
a boy or two. in my honey tea-steeped dream, i drown
them all & wake up forgiving everybody's hands.
i don't need a new god. just periodic shallow floods. i pray
fondly to the landscape of a finished crush. a drowned
heaven, easy-swaying seaweed trees & mute crab-handed
men. haunted bubbles drifting skyward, tiny breaths of prayer.
Catherine Weiss is a poet and illustrator based in Western Massachusetts. Their work has been published in Freezeray Poetry, Gravel Mag, Voicemail Poems, Jersey Devil Press, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Buck Off Mag, Noble/Gas Quarterly, and Slamfind.
In her mysterious monochromatic photographs, Jing Lin reconstructs a familiar world that no one has been to. Her background in motion pictures informs her current work. As a graduate photography student at Academy of Art University, she worked with multiple darkroom techniques in traditional and alternative printing processes. She blurs the edge between photography and painting through the use of experimental processes. Solitary, Jing’s most recent body of work, portrays a nonexistent place to examine the theme of self-confinement. Constantly, she explores photography with these questions in mind: What did I see? What did I not see? www.jinglinphotography.com/
Chinese, b. 1993, Chengdu, China, based in San Francisco, USA.
Chinese, b. 1993, Chengdu, China, based in San Francisco, USA.
