The poet with tender sensibilities

Jennifer Chang

Jennifer Chang was born and raised in New Jersey. She was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow in Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, Best New Poets 2005, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, The New Republic, New England Review, VQR, and Pleiades. She reviews regularly for Boston Review and VQR. She has received fellowships and scholarships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She co-chairs the Advisory Board of Kundiman, an Asian American poetry organization based in NYC. Currently, she is a Commonwealth Fellow and Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Virginia.

Some of her poems

Estuary

My house faced an estuary.
I looked for where ocean tide
instructed river flow.
I was more river, pliant
to the sea, and did no roving.
Supple as current, and as reckless, I was
a loose believer.
My face, an estuary.
My river-mouth. Ocean-eyed.
~
Mornings were a drowned city. Gulls
fell from the fog, their voices
trailing chords of hunger.

They say absence culls the wayward,
that the derelict leaf
soon ashes and is air.

Who says?

Well,
I heard it said. And, sensing my own
diminishment, know it.

~
Color of water—
not blue, not clarity.
Heard the loon

brooding regret,
or caution: The darkest
pools of water
form the sky’s silhouette.
~

I was not good. The house sank,
the soggy bank would not hold.
A spirit rocking like a boat
took me to this between place.
Took me for goodness—

I mistook. No, misspoke.
The poverty grass
flowering in the dunes. True, what is
ruinous
is also vital. When I swim to the estuary,
I will not know where I am.

~

I chased the breakers, their compass of come
and come again.

Believe me,the bay mothered the cove, and both
are outlet and inlet: Let down,

let go.

Where the swallowed voice
becomes the choking voice.
In the estuary,

I saw a face of silent answer.


The History of Anonymity

I had the fog's countenance
and it was good. It took me

to the seaside cliffs

where I watched the seaside from a crevice. Cold,

unctuous stone, I sat and saw

the darkness grow
and grow. Could this be

the afterworld?
I am in this world,

I am two parts water

to one part salt, I am

conciliatory

as a chair.In The History of Anonymity, the glacier longs to be water,

and each granule of salt

begs a lesser atom.
We will know each other

less, the voice writes.
I am already

in this afterworld.
You will find me where the
I am two parts…
*
Once,

I traveled to a shore

where I knew tide pools would form.

I loved the sea anemones, loose flowers

or creatures of all mouth,
moving more as water

than as live things. Their mouths on my ankles,

on my fingers, I wanted to be devoured

and could hear exhales
and inhales

whisper through water. Crouched, I saw this
as waving. So much
to the sea is seeing. I studied its

inconstancy,
its strange inability

to depart

for good. What if I said:

Stay off the shore. It is my shore

and nothing shall enter it.

THE END,
finito, Quod erat

demonstrandum: never return.
See.

That simple.
*

from Page 333 of The History of Anonymity –

The ocean swallowed my diary. It swallowed my words. I have secrets

from you. You with no
name, do you love me who is

without a face? Or do you love me without

a sound? In your arms, I am further and we are

one apparition-disperse
and sing

quietly.
I believe,

you are beginning
to understand me.

Are we not

the same

difference, the same
sums multiplied into an air

abandoned. Weren't you too
born of an empty room? We lack

a bloom. Isn't that
where we are?
Rootless. Love,
we are

gone.
*
I swam to not drown:

the difference between the two is one stroke.

The water had made me ill.

Submerged, my body--a wave, the sea's

disciple--was gone. My will,

a willing pawn. The world was all

sea long ago,

in the before world. I imagine,


it was much like the afterworld.

Three thoughts and a wave could drag me to shore

or pull me under. The voice:

To not be is to be free. Beautiful pliability,

for once, I was without

questions, a mouth full of salt and seaweed,

kept afloat by heat

and blood. One stroke against the undertow,

or one stroke for.
*
from page 456 of The History of Anonymity –

I have never liked walking
or listening. Both make me feel more alone.

I listened once
for a rarer bird. Too many gulls

grace this place,
their accompaniment of the tide's yes & no.

Anonymity is not a name
but an entrance. I won't tell you

where I've gone. Love pains us
with knowing. You want to turn the page,

to define every open
vowel. O - that's where I begin

and end, O… no
gasp, please; read nothing into this. It is no music

the ocean makes. The sea,
the shore, whatever you choose

to call it, I won't be
there. I won't
*
This tide pool pockets five pink stones.

At high tide, there will be none.

There will not even be a pool.
And at low tide,

what then?

Perhaps anonymity is the ocean floor

without the ocean.

Then it must also be
the ground we walk on.

Those five pink stones

and their life of subtraction,

their dustward ambition.

I would be good at that.

The water had made me ill.

I sat in shallower ripples,
counting dried-out starfish—
they died open-handed, golden—

I sat with two tight fists in my lap.
Were each fist a stone,

I would know the ocean floor, I would

attend the ocean's departure.

Often

I do not see myself

as different.

Then the day comes
when I do not see myself at all. Shadows limn my breath

and motion. What is

speaking: a voice
or a mistake of hearing?
First, I was known,
*
then unknown.

You don't believe me. You think, if there is a voice,

there is a soul, but you are young, your gestures suggest

your composition: stolen wings

of birds, laughable

accidents, and the kindest lies.
They died brittle, holding nothing.

A starfish is a cruel hand,

will choke a sea urchin with its cruel clasp.

I have seen this many times.
Seen the sea urchin turn

anonymous, seen it limp

and lose its shell.
Six dried-out starfish

around a dried-out pool,
one
with each finger torn.

My voice

is always becoming another voice.

There were nights of evaporation:
the ocean made a fog, fixed above

and yet, drifting into the next valley.
Did the fog make an ocean there?
I won't say I am loneliest at night—

the water had made me ill—
but every night I saw
an entrance, and saw

the tides, at their highest, stand still.

Waves are waves

and wind
their counterpoint.

And what am I?
*
from page 910 of The History of Anonymity

Mostly, I have forgotten that world.

I had a face
then, gave it up. The eyes

were gray. Or green, a color

like a growl. I have
forgotten. In the afterworld, every we
is an I.

Does knowing this soothe you?

Your longing
has a clean finish;

mine echoes its hollow chord,

is too frail.