INTERVIEW: "If we meet each other in hell, it’s not hell": Daisuke Shen in Conversation with Chariot Wish
Daisuke Shen speaks with Chariot Wish about their new poetry collection, P.E.A.C.E. Discussed: the indifference of NYC, utopia and hell, the controlling nature of clocks, and knowing death.
In Chariot Wish’s debut full-length poetry collection, P.E.A.C.E. (Changes Press, March 1, 2026,), their poems transport us into an Eden bearing marked resemblance to city life — fruits of desire glisten inside grimy bathroom stalls; lovers sew feathers onto each others’ backsides, becoming angels; through the fog of a night club, a maiden can be seen fingering someone’s star-shaped stigmata. Like Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” P.E.A.C.E. presents us with scenes of decay and pleasure so dazzling that one hardly knows where to train their eye, or if the eye is still a thing that can be trained.
It is thus fitting that despite the book’s title, Wish does not view writing as a source of comfort but rather a duty to excavate the truth, however painful and disconcerting it may be. But even while we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we shall fear no evil, so long as there are others alongside us — as Wish writes in the book’s self-titular poem, “if we meet in Hell, it’s not Hell.”
Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Wish via Google Docs about their concerns (and unconcerns) spanning Hell and Utopia, desire and grief, a New York City that loves its inhabitants, and an American state which doesn’t, inviting us to participate in a kind of meaning-making that rejects futility in favor of full and complicated joy.
Daisuke Shen: How are you doing tonight?
Chariot Wish: I had a lovely day taking my roommate to her doctor’s appointment even though I had too much sugar and caffeine before going to the Frick collection.
DS: Something I appreciate about you is how you seem to always be able to make it a good day, even if offputting events occur in the meantime. Would you agree with that assessment about yourself?
CW: I think I would, though it’s not always a conscious thing. I think it’s moreso my general attitude towards…. New York? It’s generally easy for me to wake up and be like, What’s going to make this a good day?, and then do it — the city has the architecture for that.
DS: I really like that answer, especially since we’ve been discussing works such as Dhalgren and Tekkonkinkreet a lot recently — both of which have to do with adapting to the unknown, and falling in love with a city that doesn’t really care about if you live or die. And a lot of your book also addresses these same concerns.
CW: I agree! I started writing P.E.A.C.E. when I first moved here. I was also reading Dhalgren. A lot of it feels like my love letter to New York; even if it’s not explicitly about the city itself, that’s where the energy comes from. I know it’s really annoying and corny to live here and write about it, but it feels unavoidable. I also think that the city does care if I (we) live or die.
DS: Tell me more about that last sentence.
CW: Well surely it’s not easy in any sense to be here, but I think New York still possesses an immense capacity for and towards life. I don’t think the soul of the city is indifferent to its citizens — it’s the death cult of the social and bureaucratic structures of the American state as a whole.
DS: I understand that sort of reflexive impulse we have to have to follow a sentiment with the fact that we know it’s corny or annoying, as if to share in mutual adoration is a source of shame. What value is there in indulging our feelings, in writing through it all, even as this death cult tramples life around us? In poetry in particular?
CW: I think that in terms of creating work through the death cult and abnegation of life, poetry is about creating and sharing in life. As I get older as a writer, the project has become less about my personal feelings and more about trying to translate the immutable. To me, it’s more about giving something to the world that we can all share. Writing isn’t therapeutic for me, or an outlet for my emotions; but there is something about the power of frivolity within the abject conditions of the modern times. It’s important to show respect for frivolity and “useless” endeavors. Art and culture are a part of the socius, they’re a part of human life.
DS: Do you see the different selves you’ve inhabited throughout the years of living and writing here? How do you respond to those Chariots now?
CW: For me, other people’s art and writing is the balm. I had this conversation the other day with a friend where they pointed out that I said “new work” rather than saying “my new poem.” And how they don’t refer to their craft as “painting” but rather “the work.” We had this whole conversation about why we have the impetus to call it “work” rather than by its name, and well, that’s how it feels to me. Work isn’t easy and doesn’t feel good. It’s a duty, a need to do, and it does feel even worse if I don’t do it, but it doesn’t…. Calm my nerves.
Oh, wait. I haven’t even gotten to the question. I do see all my different selves in P.E.A.C.E — I regard them as little sisters. Like, try to extend a lot of love and grace. I’ve also been trying to reach into what my younger selves have to teach me.
DS: You were saying something about inhabiting?
CW: I was just going to say it’s funny you used the term “inhabit,” ‘cause for me, it feels less like they’re vessels and more like…. Spirits floating around.
DS: When I think about how you deal with the notion of time, of past and present pressing against each other enough to where the boundaries dissolve — In some ways, time feels almost nonexistent in the landscape of these poems because we are too stricken by what’s happening in front of us, the beauty and the fear.
CW: Time is definitely non-existent in the landscape of the poems — or not non-existent, but conforming to a very experimental notion of time. In that way, I also think of it as being a character in the work. Time is alive. For me, this collapsing of past/present/future in the work is more of an intellectual exercise, more of a woo-woo impulse to describe the actual nature of the universe, that time isn’t linear, blah blah blah. It’s also political — our time is controlled, and the way time is kept is a form of control. I have a friend who is always drawing broken clocks, and has this phrase, “We have our own notions of time.” It’s about autonomy and actualizing utopic notions.
DS: What glimpses of utopia do we see in P.E.A.C.E.? I personally read it as something we are preparing for, but its true face is hidden from us. Or hell is a kind of utopia too.
CW: Oh that’s interesting, saying hell is a kind of utopia too.
DS: Because I know that for some of us, it is easier to remain in environments which are not exactly pleasant, or safe, but feel more reliable. Perhaps hell is a kind of imaginable stability, which makes it hell, and heaven is not entirely imaginable? Even so, the beautiful parts of hell cannot be discredited.
CW: Related to the question about younger Chariot, and what I am trying to learn from them — while writing P.E.A.C.E, I was obsessed with imagining Utopia. I agree that the true face of it is hidden from us, and a lot of the imaginings of it are negations or inversions of the hellishness we are in, so a kernel of hell exists within utopia. Simone Weil has this line — “...to say that the world is not worth anything, that this life is of no value and to give evil as the proof is absurd, for if these things are worthless what does evil take from us?”
Due to my theological proclivities, I don’t think heaven and utopia are synonymous. Utopia to me is so earthly. Though at the same time, hell is also soooo earthly. I have this line from the book: “If we meet each other in hell, it’s not hell.” I was trying to say that this earth is not damned, this isn’t hell on earth — we are preparing for utopia. Even in its incomprehensible nature, it’s mostly about knowing that we can believe in its possibility.
DS: Following with the sentiment of the Weil quote, I’m similarly interested in the notions of evil that people hold, and how hard it seems sometimes for people to name something as evil. But I think you are a special person in that you afford people humanity and recognize that morality is subjective, while at the same time not tolerating bullshit or unconscionable behavior in others. I’d like to know what has informed your personal moral system over the years.
CW: Well, in shorthand, I’m an anarchist and I’m a Christian. There are probably a lot more building blocks of my internal and external modes of moving through the world, but they all stem from or lead to those two orientations.
DS: I found it interesting that images and scenes and body parts are spliced together, but there is no scene in which we dwell for very long — The reader is tasked to build around both what is seen and unseen in order to navigate this dreamlike terrain.
In the act of remembering, what do you find captures your attention the most (i.e., do you think about scent, songs you were listening to, the shapes of someone’s neck rather than their face…)?
CW: For me, it’s more of a bodily experience. The emotion captures my attention the most, the way the memory feels in my body — getting thrown right back into how the emotions were held and experienced in my body at the time. Also, the sounds. The sound of people’s voices, or the sound of the scene. Maybe the light, too. Scent and songs mostly trigger the remembering.
DS: “I wanted desire—/a sensation I was unwilling to be moved by.” Is desire about escaping the self? What happens to the self in, and after, the consummation of desire?
CW: I don’t think desire is about escaping the self — though there have been many times where my romantic and sexual fixations are such because I am avoiding some sort of responsibility, in life or to my self. I’m not exactly sure what happens to the self in and after the consummation of desire — though in my own experiences, it’s a constant alchemical spiral between dissolving the self, and then harsh reification of the self.
DS: A core part of your writing is the idea of living without pretense — ignoring the dark parts of life is not a privilege afforded to queer people (“Fags know death / Live close to death”). How does knowing death allow you to keep living?
CW: I think for any young queer person, especially of certain political and ideological leanings, or maybe just in my cohort and friend group, we have this really intense need for being connected to lineage. So much of that lineage is bound up in death, in the loss of life and lives cut short, especially young artistic lives. When I first came to NYC, I was obsessed with these threads and working within ways that felt like holding onto this rope that was left for us. I don’t know if that answers the question or if I can really answer it. I don’t know if the death that “fags know” is the same as general death. In that sense, you just keep living because you have to.
DS: “When I saw your face and nothing was left but your face / We flowered into a wound marked upon the world of the living.” In what ways do we carry our loved ones with us, even when they are no longer physically present?
CW: Well, I think in every ounce of absence, there is a presence. To quote Simone Weil again, the last epigraph in the book is a quote by her that reads, “Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.” Absence is only conceivable when there has been contact with the departed. In the thought, and the memory. This maybe goes back to the part of the conversation about time. Time folds in on itself in this way. I’m also thinking about this thing my dad had said to me, during a time when I had recently lost a dear friend. He asked me to describe them, and then told me that I had to now enact and embody all of the things I loved about my friend. “Godstar” is about a soul returning to the eternal web — tapping into that and letting our dead move through us. Sometimes I’m like, What would this friend do? and then I do it.
DS: Love is always an urgent endeavor. How has the way you love changed as you grow older?
CW: I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve simultaneously become more giving with my love and at the same time more protective of my love, both romantically and otherwise. I think I’ve grown more honest in love.
DS: What have your lovers revealed to you about yourself?
CW: I think every lover reveals something different. In a general sense, I’ve learned that I’m very weird and I wear my heart on my sleeve.
DS: How do sounds become objects? Objects, sounds?
CW: In a way, sound waves are physical, right? Though I guess it’s through the word! Words are very sculptural to me — they’re both visual and auditory. So in the same way sounds become objects, it goes the other way with objects becoming sound.
DS: What is beautiful about disgust?
CW: Being extremely moved by an emotion and experience is beautiful in itself!
DS: And how do you want people who might not know you in real life to remember you after reading this interview?
CW: Ahaha aw, that’s a sweet thing to think about — my friends and the people who know me remembering me. It’d be nice if they had the image of me laughing and smiling, if they’ve ever seen that.
Chariot Wish is a poet living in New York. They are an associate editor at Wonder Press and online editor of Amygdala Journal. Their debut full-length collection P.E.A.C.E. is now available from Changes Press.
 | A guest post by
|