“Cave as Museum of Explosions” and Other Poems

By Ren Phung

Ajit Chauhan, Acrostic, 2023. Erased photograph, 55 x 45 cm.
Image description: Spiderweb dripping with dew is superimposed against an old photo of an interior scene with antiques, a vitrine full of china, couch, and spinningwheel in monochromatic grey-green.

Cave as Spell to Conjure—

“Kill everything you eat. Understanding is ruin.” 

- from “Crown For Peasant Heads” by Jimin Seo

“BLOT/ROON/BLANK/ROON/BLOOD/

 ROON/MAR/ROON/WHITE/ROON/

RUN/ROON/RAZE/ROON/RAIN/

ROON/BED/ROON/DOOR/ROON/

LEAVE/ROON/HOME/ROON/STAY”

- from Mouth to Dirt

—the boy in the tunnel, how

it curves like a parabola chasing

its own ends 

You were a crab, dadling (crab) I mean

                  in this life—doesn’t your neck feel naked 

without its skin? I wish

I could watch the world the way

  you did 

From below the dirt

a graveyard, a city of skyscrapers

a body a highway marker

for a spirit finding its way

home

Leaving is not the same as letting go (let me—)

Difficult to be lost  

in a tunnel with no branches

In one life, you dreamed you were 

    a stick to be fetched but I woke up 

the scarecrow/I am so bloated on past lives 

 your memory holds/

has become an exchange of/matters/ 

Something must go/this time I’ll make sure it’s me/ 

I believe in many things (but not entropy)/

In one life I, candlefire/but before that I 

 the stick you used to strike 

my knees (a match)/in another I

  the stick carving note 

             to future self in rock wall this tender 

 flesh/another/I/two parabolas

 turned one to dowse damp heat 

below the dirt/and before even that I/ 

a boy who knew not to reject love so instead 

he rejected matter from the belly 

     until he became 

a stick 

     / 

       There are easier 

things to do in life 

              than just happen,           and yet we happen, 

                  again           and again 

              we happen, each time taking           all this heat and burying 

        ourselves deep below the earth until           the rattle turns into membrane/ 

 tunnel/a bridge to another entrance/ 

so if sticks can/be anything/ 

let them build me a door at the end of this tunnel/

 a door to another ROON/ 

a ROON uncavitied/the roof 

of its mouth/sticks/

and halfs/ticks/ 

and nothing/sticks/ 

because like a lost crab

chasing after its tiny old shell

you arrive/again yourself/ 

arrive again/yourself/

arrive/again/yourself/

arrive/as blow to the head/

of a nation/of know 

capital/of know 

name/of know 

story but the one

we tell/ourselves

to stone/skin

to light/ 

to strike

Ajit Chauhan, Ambos Mundos (both worlds), 2021. Erased postcard, 43 x 36 cm.
Image description: Yellowed postcard with two centered cut-out circles that partially reveal a black and white photo of figures toiling in a landscape.

Cave as Graveyard of Crab Shells

Dadling crawls under mountain of tuna-can-shells 

but they flutter like bats to the tunnel’s roof

We stick our tongues out to catch the tuna 

but only rust falls from their hollow bodies

only rust 

only rust

I scuttle under cardboard-box-shell

Dadling knocks from the outside (outside)

I tell him to enter and he jumps on top

jumps and jumps until it’s just cardboard crumbs and us

only us 

only us

Dadling climbs on top of the giant-rotten-mongosteen-shell

gnaws at its purple skin but it grows angry

 it opens itself wide to reveal its wet, milky flesh

bellows so loudly the echos build cities of themselves

too hunger

too hunger

The cave is the only shell for us, Dadling

to escape we have to grow bigger

We have to puncture the tunnel membrane

break the skin with our own

He jumps down a hole in the dirt

falls from the ceiling like a buried memory

gravity

making good on its promise

Ajit Chauhan, Hysteria, 2020. Erased postcard, 16 ½ x 13 ½ inches,
Image description: Yellowed postcard with a central erasure shaped like a wave or mountain that partially reveals a black and white photo of a seascape.

Cave as Museum of Explosions

The Museum of Explosions explodes every Saturday and is rebuilt by the following Monday.

Tickets are half off on Sundays as you know and another half off if you carry a grandmother.

Sorry don’t mind the broken glass I was requesting a bigger broom but then the walkie-talkie exploded.

And then the broom exploded.

This here is the exhibit on our little cockroach friend julip.

julip

(Hush, he’s sleeping. He has survived the scarlet pollination of Đồng Nai six divorces the collapse of a red giant and over 400 blows of my broom. Very exhausting career.)

Sweep sweep. Sweep sweep. 

Sorry again about all this. 

Yesterday’s explosion happened earlier than we hoped which seems to be the case for most explosions.

To your left is the aftermath of bird baby rocketed to freckles by slingshot boy waiting in field.

rocking

ricerice sweet

julip leg

(If you listen closely you can hear the little bugs

unfattened by secrets the pixel-shaped boom of a seed dropped onto dirt the thrashing gesture of the boat that never came. Sorry no questions will be fielded at this time and please keep your voice down we are wary of aftershock explosions.)

Sweepy sweepy. 

Watch your step here, mind the blood. Much of it is yours. 

Up ahead is our last tour guide kevin nguyen who retired just last month. 

He couldn’t make it all the way into the case before he exploded.

k

eeee

n ͕                                  

                                         i

(Again no questions will be fielded at this time. Sorry. Also please step off that ladder we are in the middle of reconstructing.)

The last of our current exhibitions that is relatively intact is a grandmother. 

Sweepity. 

Sweepity.

Sweepity sweepy.

↺

(She exploded before I had a chance to meet her. I wrote her name on the placard but I’m afraid that too will explode if I speak it. Every Friday I bring my camo pajamas to work and go to sleep in the case 

I explode on Saturday. I explode on Saturday.) 

Please I promise I will field your question soon 

as I find an answer!

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Ren Phung is a seriously unserious writer from southern California. Their prose has won the Nicholas Sparks Prize and the Black Warrior Review Fiction Prize. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, Arkana, and other places. Go find it, or don't. Find something else instead. Tumble through holes. Make them bigger. Make stupidly. Turn to liquid.

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San Francisco-based artist Ajit Chauhan distorts and reorganizes his visual surroundings through puzzles, sculptures, and hand-stamped prints. His series of deconstructed LP covers, procured from neighborhood flea markets, are altered through a process of sanding and erasing to render their figures abstract and void of identity, gender, or branding, leaving visible only a mouth or a pair of eyes as faded and unresolved portraits. He often uses black and sepia-toned ink and papers sourced from his grandfather in India, and fittingly his subjects recall the traditional imagery of his ancestry. 

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