Read “That Time You Were Giggling, Giggling, Giggling” by Chen Chen, published in Shō No. 8 (Winter 2025/26), accompanied by an audio recording by the author.
That Time You Were Giggling, Giggling, Giggling
We were in bed & you were
huh? 11 years, & I’d never heard
this. Of course,
you’d giggled plenty
before, & especially when I tickled your neck
while cuddling in bed, which of course
I just did, given our setting,
the setup, but this was something else, this
was a huge glee gong
gonging strong. & it continued, then passed
a certain point of plausible, & they
were so textbook cutie-pie, your giggles,
without any ragged
running out of proverbial steam or literal breath
that I had to ask, Are you doing a bit,
& then, Are you okay, when you just kept giggling,
Wait, are you okay, & you just nodded while giggling on,
on & on my ears were kissed
by the bubbliest song
seemingly about & in the form
of infinity.
How much more,
I wondered, how much longer, your jolly eternity,
& could I live there, too?
I didn’t want it to end, didn’t want you to stop,
don’t stop, don’t die,
don’t die, don’t die, don’t.
That was the song
I sang in secret.
Though probably you heard some of it
in the way my hand went back
the second the gigglefest seemed to wane, my fingers
had to find again that somehow
new spot on your neck.
About this poem: I’m drawn to laughter as a subject because it seems (is?) so impossible to write about, to put into language. But it’s the act of grasping for (and maybe never really arriving at) words that moves me and seems the central movement of a poem. I love how alive laughter, real laughter, is. And I love words that are, however inadequate for the subject and in the face of loss, defiantly alive.
Chen Chen lives in Rochester, New York, and teaches for the MFA program at New England College. He is the author of two books of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (2017), both published by Boa Editions. His latest chapbook is Love That for Us, a collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein, forthcoming from & Change in 2026. His work appears in many publications, including 100 Queer Poems and The Norton Introduction to Literature. His honors include the Thom Gunn Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the National Book Award longlist, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists.
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