Poem-A-Day: Freedom in Ohio by Jennifer Chang

Freedom in Ohio   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. Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Chang. Used with permission of the author. About this Poem:   "On my thirty-fifth birthday, three months after moving to Ohio, a man in Zanesville released his menagerie of fifty-some exotic animals and then killed himself. I was feeling strange about time and place, the threads connecting the past to the present to the future, and I was haunted by the sudden perilous freedom of these animals whose presence that day was marked not by their bodies but by highway signs warning 'Caution Exotic Animals.' The greatest dangers may be the ones we can't see--the rustling in the woods one reporter noted months later that could've been the wind or an ornery tiger, or the wonderful and terrifying future which seems to get remade with every new decision we make." Jennifer Chang Poetry by Chang The History of Anonymity   Poem-A-Day launched in 2006 and features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.   Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org. April 12, 2013 Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Her honors include fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.  She is an assistant professor at Bowling Green State University. Related Poems Freedom, Revolt, and Love by Frank Stanford Animals and Art by Ron Padgett Bats by Paisley Rekdal

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