When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family?the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes?all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one’s own path in identity, life, and love.

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

To be a season of laughter
when my father says
his coworker is like that, he can tell
because the guy wears pink
socks, see, you don’t, so you
can’t, you can’t be
one of them.

To be the one
my parents raised me
to be. A season
from the stormiest planet.
A very good feeling
with a man
.Every feeling,

in pink shoes.
Every step, hot pink.

Chen Chen: was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. He lives in Lubbock, Texas, where he is pursuing a PhD in at Texas Tech University.