Category: Jennifer Chang

by Jennifer Chang

on my birthday

I want a future

making hammocks

out of figs and accidents.

Or a future quieter

than snow. The leopards

stake out the backyard

and will flee at noon.

My terror is not secret,

but necessary,

as the wild must be,

as sandhill cranes must

thread the meadow

yet again. Thus, autumn

cautions the cold

and the wild never want

to be wild. So what

to do about the thrum

of my thinking, the dangerous

pawing at the door?

Yesterday has no harmony

with today. I bought

a wool blanket, now shredded

in the yard. I abided by

dwelling, thought nothing

of now. And now?

I’m leopard and crane,

all’s fled.

from Some Say the LarkFind more by Jennifer Chang at the library

Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Chang
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Jennifer Chang

Here is an icehouse that no longer houses ice.

Here is an alfalfa meadow in need of mowing.

Here is the barn where a sauced and saucy welder

has left behind his anvil. It was never his barn.

Here is a clearing in the woods that didn’t exist

until December’s ice storm. It was once a grove

of maiden ferns and hardwood trees. A kind man

cleared the roots and trunks, then kindly retreated.

I have stood in this clearing and cannot decide

if I miss the trees or if I love newborn clarity.

How can I love a damaged place? But I love

rooms and cities I’ll never return to, and once

I loved a man for how he damaged me. Here

is the footbridge unbridged by that storm. Here

is the fire pond the walker could not find: he did not

know my route. Here is the water. Where is the fire?

from Some Say the LarkFind more by Jennifer Chang at the library

Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Chang
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Jennifer Chang

It was inside, gathering heat in her blood, slowly killing her.

No one said a word.

And this grew her fury further, grieved her immeasurably.

What did it look like.

A knot, or a slag of granite.

I imagined another brother, unborn for he was only a knot.

How my granite brother would never leave her.

I grew up in her abject sadness, which soon became our speaking.

And then I left.

Smaller, smaller, he was her favorite.

Jays nag the first light.

And now I am awake before dawn hoping today is a day when I won’t

have to say anything.

And then I.

To me, it was unintelligible.

I could see through her skin, see my brother not growing inside her.

Would he ever come outside.

The raging jays, the squawking catastrophe.

I wanted to know.

What is the difference between a son and a daughter, I wanted to know.

That is private.

That was her answer.

from Some Say the LarkFind more by Jennifer Chang at the library

Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Chang
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Jennifer Chang

What I would say about certain trees

is that to master love one must be devastated by it.

Certain trees know.

A poem has nothing to do with fact,

though both are made things.

I explain that certain trees know

certain facts, but what poems.

Our son is a rutabaga.

To him, everything

is a rutabaga.

___

What were we talking about last night,

listening to the fan, falling asleep?

___

I’ve been thinking about things

as the source from which all thought rises.

Not as omens, signs, talismans, tokens, symbols,

figures of speech, or ideas.

A thing introduces a thought and is never more than a thing.

Yes, that sounds right.

The E detached from my silver love ring;

there was no meaning to it, though now I know

the saleswoman was likely false. Her calming nod

against fragility. It will tarnish,

but it will not crack

as the plates will crack. The thought

of you not listening when I ask again

what it means.

Family heirloom plates I hate. These small windows

bring in no light.

I’ve stared at what’s most broken in you.

An unintelligibility

to the flat sheet sliding off of me,

a silent body is not always asleep.

Even when happiest I think about dying.

___

I want to remember how

his face turned down

and took away our light

to become a first order of love.

___

A woman once opened my hand in her smoked palms

and told me I would be dead in a week.

Then put out your cigarette right here,

I dared, pointing to

my truth spot

or whatever she called it,

a whisper of a wrinkle on my skin.

That’s the story you’d like me to tell

as our son naps fitfully in the other room.

Also the one about swimming

on a high floor of the Hancock Tower.

Both stories end the same way.

___

Crust of sugar at the bottom of your glass.

Keys to whatever doors we’ve forgotten.

Mostly used lipstick in Shanghai Nights,

a garish red. The paper sheath of a straw

which for a precious five minutes served as his toy.

Little notes to myself I can’t bear to throw away.

All waste we shall bequeath to our heir. Our air.

___

from Some Say the LarkFind more by Jennifer Chang at the library

Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Chang
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

by Jennifer Chang

The daffodils can go fuck themselves.

I’m tired of their crowds, yellow rantings

about the spastic sun that shines and shines

and shines. How are they any different

from me? I, too, have a big messy head

on a fragile stalk. I spin with the wind.

I flower and don’t apologize. There’s nothing

funny about good weather. Oh, spring again,

the critics nod. They know the old joy,

that wakeful quotidian, the dark plot

of future growing things, each one

labeled Narcissus nobilis or Jennifer Chang.

If I died falling from a helicopter, then

this would be an important poem. Then

the ex-boyfriends would swim to shore

declaiming their knowledge of my bulbous

youth. O, Flower, one said, why aren’t you

meat? But I won’t be another bashful shank.

The tulips have their nervous joie de vivre,

the lilacs their taunt. Fractious petals, stop

interrupting me with your boring beauty.

All the boys are in the field gnawing raw

bones of ambition and calling it ardor. Who

the hell are they? This is a poem about war.

from Some Say the LarkFind more by Jennifer Chang at the library

Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Chang
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.