The Ice Cream Sandwich Connoisseur: Chen Chen’s Poetry and Queer Texan Identity

In his new collection of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen Chen writes, “You are the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of your generation,” and I believe him. I am sitting on a bench outside my favorite ice cream spot in the Oregon town I now live in, and I feel like the ice cream sandwich connoisseur of my generation. Of course, when Chen writes this line, he speaks of more than just sweet treats. In the poem, “Summer,” he goes on to speak of your generation, “queer kids who could go online & learn that queer doesn’t have to mean disaster,” where “queer means, splendiferously, you.”

This poem is a standout to me in a poetry collection that brings me immense joy. Chen dips into queer happiness, blending humor and pop culture and ice cream together to show the resilience of queerness. Reading this poem, I became the queer kid who saw queerness as splendiferous, but I was also the queer twenty-something from Texas who could go online and read about the laws introduced in Texas legislature that would limit discussions of LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom. The laws intended to make queer kids think queer has to mean disaster.  

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I am a lucky queer Texan. Queer joy has always existed in my life, similarly to how it lives within the lines of Chen Chen’s poetry. In one instance of queer joy, Chen, in his poem “Spring,” writes, “Seventy-five degrees & we’re three ready for this! queers in the most flattering / shorts.” Chen provides a splash of humor as he paints the picture of a group of queer friends enjoying a spring day. These moments remind me of my high school. My Houston public high school was shockingly queer friendly and hosted an annual LGBQT+ arts festival. I was surrounded by openly queer teachers and mentors who, unintentionally and by just being themselves, showed me the possibility of queer life full of happiness, creativity and community, but mostly, I consider myself a lucky queer Texan because I left. My family moved to Oregon a little over a year ago, and I gained the privilege of watching the wicked, anti-queer legislature implemented from afar. My heart ached for the queer kids caught in the middle of those hateful laws, but I, shamefully, felt grateful to not be caught in the crosshairs anymore.

Instead, I called the Pacific Northwest my new home. Once I got a shiny new Oregon driver’s license, I tried to eliminate my Texan-ness from my personality. When college classes started in the fall, I introduced myself as an Oregonian, hoping no one would notice my use of the Texan contraction “y’all’d’ve” or my resilience to summer humidity. I did not want to claim the state banning gender affirming healthcare for youth and proposing bills to limit the rights of queer folks, like myself, as my home. Queer and Texan did not feel like two adjectives that could blend together. My own identity sounded like an oxymoron.

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I picked up Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency this spring and cried the whole collection through. This collection is not inherently sad. Rather, it was one of the funniest and most endearing collections I have read in a while. Chen has a gift for infusing his own observations with wit. For example, “I wish poets were named after their superpowers. Like, The Amazing Volta. Or, / Captain Syllable Count” from “Origin Story,” or “My heart comes back in a very large FedEx box. / As though it has accumulated new possessions. / But no, it is just surrounded by a lavish amount of bubble wrap” from “Autumn.” As a poet myself, after reading each line, I silently cursed to myself, wishing I had written the line first and bemoaning the fact I would never be able to write the line because Chen had already written it. To say this collection is my favorite collection of poetry I have ever read is somehow an understatement.

However, I did not cry because of the beauty of Chen’s poetry. I cried because he wrote about queer Texan joy. He noticed the possibility in the queer Texan oxymoron that I had run away from. Chen earned his PhD in creative writing from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. And he writes about his time in Lubbock in his new collection. In “a small book of questions: chapter vi,” Chen speaks of the “beauty of queer texas / tech students forming a queer reading group.” Chen breaks his line to make his reader notice the “beauty of queer texas.” There it is. That oxymoron that seems less contradictory with every metaphor. He writes of “the beautiful anger / of a queer organizer, in the comment section of a poem / online, one of my lubbock poems. the organizer’s beautiful / critique of my complaint / over how small lubbock pride was. her you don’t know / how underfunded, understaffed we are.” Chen made me see the beauty in even a small Texan pride event. The act of rebellion in saying we are here!

In “Ode to Rereading Rimbaud in Lubbock, Texas,” Chen proposes queer joy as rebellion. He says, “Instead of huddling in the corner of Maxey Park, let’s make Lubbock Gay Pride stream through 34th Street, through Buddy Holly Avenue.” What a possibility to claim space never intended for you! Why did I never think of it? Chen writes, “Let’s holler, troublemongers. In the lick of many summers.” In all those years I lived in Texas, I never hollered in that way. I made my queerness convenient for others – keep it in queer friend circles, keep it out of the classroom. I wish Chen released his poetry book a year earlier. I wish I read it before I left Texas, but I can still reclaim my queer Texan-ness now. At heart, I am a queer Texan. I no longer consider it an oxymoron.

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I met Chen Chen in Texas. In 2017, I went on a school trip to the Texas Book Festival in Austin. I stood in the long, winding line to ask him to sign my copy of his book. I told him I read one of his poems in my poetry class, though I had forgotten the title. In my book, he wrote, “Thank you for supporting this book. It was great meeting you in Austin.” Chen’s poetry has always been tied to Texas for me. His queer poetry is Texan for me. That queer joy is Texan to me.

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When I closed Chen’s collection and wiped the tears off my cheeks, one line stuck with me: “how queer, west texas, thanks to us.” How queer my Texan identity. How complicated and confusing and conflicting. And yet, how beautiful. The most beautiful ice cream sandwich that I am a connoisseur of.  ♦

Sources

culture, love + heartbreak, social justiceSunstroke MagazineShelby Edison, review, essay, Sarah WrightComment