Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: I was impressed by the lavishness of this poem, the brands it name-drops, sure, but also the swift movement from image to image in a syntactical chain. Its lyricism seems to extol consumer spending until a final turn at the end that reveals the performance of the self. Kwon has created a cinematic prose poem that draws from the best of the Surrealist history of that form.
To hear Christine read the poem, click below:
On Saturn It Rains Diamonds
The place I am happiest is stepping into another plane, shopping. Armed with infinite money, and a desire to spend, to buy a small piece of beauty, I go out with card outstretched. The morning is Gucci. The trees Louis Vuitton. The man in the tent on the street cheers me with his Christmas decorations. It’s holiday season. The windows hang stars. The mannequins laugh. My dress is night. Night is a woman with a stained mouth lying on her side. Her name is Autumn. At night I like to shop on my little black phone. At night I live in Paris. As I go down the river of glass, a well-dressed stranger rows me toward the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, we do not stop at a bistro, we do not stop for air, or to kiss, we make the chandeliers shake by trying on that and trying on this. In the fitting room I become one woman, then another, and briefly, to my distaste, I am myself.
Christine Kwon is the author of A Ribbon the Most Perfect Blue (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2023), which won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. Her poems are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Xavier Review, and Annulet. She lives in New Orleans. Follow her on Instagram @theschooloflonging.
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