"Closet space" by K-Ming Chang

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend May 22, 2019   Closet space   K-Ming Chang

I know I'm godless when my thirst converts water               into wasps, my country a carpet                                                             I finger for crumbs. A country my grandmother breeds dogs instead of daughters             because only one can be called                                                             home. I am trained to lose accents, to keep a pregnancy or cancel it out with                        another man. My tongue is                                                             a twin, one translating the other's silence. Here is my lung's list of needs:              how to hold water                                                             like a woman & not drown. I want men to stop writing &                             become mothers. I promise this                                                             is the last time I call my mother to hear her voice beside mine. I want                        the privilege of a history                                                             to hand back unworn to grow out of my mother's touch                          like a dress from                                                             childhood. Every time I flirt with girls, I say I know my way around                   a wound. I say let's bang                                                             open like doors, answer to god. I unpin from my skin, leave it to                          age in my closet & swing                                                             from the dark, a wrecking ball gown. In the closet urns of ashes:                                  we cremated my grandfather                                                             on a stovetop, stirred every nation we tried to bury him in was                          a war past calling itself                                                             one. I stay closeted with him, his scent echoing in the urn, weeks-old                     ginger & leeks, leaks                                                             of light where his bones halved & healed. With small hands, I puzzled                              him back together. I hid from                                                             his shadow in closets his feet like a chicken's, jellied bone & meatless.                 His favorite food was chicken                                                             feet, bones shallow in the meat When he got dementia, he flirted with my mother             he mouthed for my breasts                                                             like an infant We poured milk into his eyeholes                             until he saw everything                                                             neck-deep in white the Chinese color of mourning, bad                            luck, though the doctor                                                             says everything is genetics. I lock myself in the smallest rooms that fit            in my mind, my grandfather's:                                                             a house we hired back from fire. So I'll forever have a mother, I become               a daughter who goes by god. I urn                                                             my ghosts, know each by a name my own.            Copyright © 2019 K-Ming Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "This poem began as a contemplation of space and the doubleness of the closet. I thought of the closet as a place of enclosure but also as a place of storage, where memories multiply and being inside the dark feels like being inside another body." —K-Ming Chang   K-Ming Chang is the author of Past Lives, Future Bodies (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), a Lambda Literary Award finalist in Lesbian Poetry. She is a "Resist / Recycle / Regenerate" program leader for the Wing On Wo Project, where she helps lead paper-making workshops as anti-gentrification resistance and community-building. She  lives in New York. Poetry by Chang   Past Lives, Future Bodies (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) "Origin Story" by Jenny Xie "Our House" by Sophie Cabot Black "Dirt Being Dirt" by Carl Phillips May Guest Editor: Victoria Chang   Thanks to Victoria Chang, author of Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Chang about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. 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

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