"Astroturf" by Tina Chang

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend April 30, 2018   Astroturf   Tina Chang

Before my son was born, I had been inside my home often and, one spring day, sat myself on the astroturf behind a playground close to my home. I laid back, allowing the plastic grass to prick my arms and wrists. A few feet away, three girls sang a string of songs about heartbreak, all the while the lyrics broke and remade themselves on the edge of each spring leaf. I listened and I didn't listen at once which felt like my fullest attention. The girls were so casual in their beauty, legs entangled in one another, fingers braiding each other's teen hair. They seemed like one animal of burnished light and I tried not to stare. It was the kind of beauty that held its own attention, needed no validation, long eyelashes and pale arms gestured toward wholly bright selves. I closed my eyes hearing their laughter. I heard, too, from afar someone approaching. I heard a small thud and a boy's voice. They talked, they joked, and then a silence that made me open my eyes. After a longer pause, they asked him to please leave. I now saw the boy was black and I registered an expression that was slow rain coming down hard as he grabbed his backpack swinging it so fiercely, it almost hit one of the girls. As he walked away, they laughed past him. Their laughter was the long shadow that followed him for years, their laughter forced him to round the corner, almost gone from view. Before he disappeared, he yelled, "Bitch," but the memory of him left not a trace. The girls continued to sing except now there were thorns falling on the imagined grass, some of which landed close to me. When I sat up, I felt a strong kick inside me. My boy would be here soon. Six more days into the future I would meet him. I touched the area that moved. I waited.                Copyright © 2018 Tina Chang. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "'Astroturf' is a poem from my forthcoming collection, Hybrida, a book that examines mixed race through the lens of motherhood. Through the hybrid forms of zuihitsu, prose poems, ekphrastic poems, lists, and lyric essays, the poems envision a childhood of mixed race as one often fraught with danger, collision of selves, and histories. 'Astroturf' contemplates the urgent tug between the young man who disappears and the boy about to be born." —Tina Chang   Tina Chang's poetry collection Hybrida is forthcoming in May 2019 from W. W. Norton. She is also the author of Half-Lit Houses (Four Way Books, 2004) and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011). She currently serves as Brooklyn Poet Laureate. Poetry by Chang   Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way Books, 2011) "Transubstantiation" by Matthew Dickman "The Dream of Shoji" by Kimiko Hahn "Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits" by Rachel Zucker April Guest Editor: Tracy K. Smith   Thanks to Tracy K. Smith, current United States poet laureate and author of Wade in the Water (Graywolf Press, 2018), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Smith and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! 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.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038