In When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, Chen Chen writes with an intersectional voice.
OUT: The title When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities references growing up as a threshold not yet met. How do you stay young at heart?
Chen Chen: Writing poems. Daydreaming that I am an international pop star instead of writing poems. Eating Twizzlers and drinking soda (which is not so good for my physical youth).
Poems keep me “young at heart” because they keep alive my capacity for surprise and my absurd love of sound. Musical language doesn’t really make any sense. Blue rhymes with true rhymes with new—an irrational delight... or maybe a different kind of logic? “Young at heart” means questioning. Growing up means that, too.
A glorious, beautiful birthday gift: thanks to Thom Siemsen for so generously writing about my book and then interviewing me—for out.com!! Out was one of those magazines I would always sneak a peak at during trips to the library or B&N and I'd dream about one day living my best gayest life and I don't know maybe that day has come.