"The mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings deep within the body of her daughter" by Mary Jean Chan

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 2, 2019   The mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings deep within the body of her daughter   Mary Jean Chan

after Jacqueline Rose / after Chen Chen she fed me clothed me kept me safe albeit in excess five layers in spite of subtropical winter heat so much to eat I needed digestive pills to ward off the stomach's sharp protest how not to utter the un- grateful thing: that I am irrevocably her object that the poet who wrote this saved my life: Sometimes, parents & children become the most common of strangers Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again How I wished that street would appear I kept trying to make her proud of my acumen for language these words have not been for nothing I wrote to find the street where we might meet again & now there is relief guilt or blame but they are nearly always misplaced you are born into the slip- stream of your mother's unconscious if someone had told her that the last thing a young mother needs is false decency courage & cheer she might not have hurt us both but what to do with remorse & love that comes unbidden like a generous rain how to accept her care after the storm is there a point at which the mother is redeemed the child forgiven can the origin story be re-told transfigured into the version where the garden is always paradise & no one need ever fall out of grace            Copyright © 2019 Mary Jean Chan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 2, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I wrote this poem last year as I was completing my debut poetry collection. I was re-reading Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), alongside Jacqueline Rose's Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Faber, 2018). The voices of Chen and Rose became a kind of co-mingling, which, alongside my own thoughts, eventually took the form of these thin, compressed, rivulet-type poems I had first come across in Emily Berry's second collection Stranger, Baby (Faber, 2017). I wanted to explore what happens in the aftermath of reconciliation, especially between a mother and daughter whose coming out as queer severely tested their relationship for several years." —Mary Jean Chan   Mary Jean Chan's debut poetry collection is Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019). She is an editor of Oxford Poetry and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Mary Jean currently lives in London. Photo Credit: Adrian Pope Poetry by Chan   Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019) "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party" by Chen Chen "OBIT [Memory]" by Victoria Chang "So Chinese Girl" by Dorothy Chan September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral   Thanks to Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine (Graywolf Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Corral about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible   Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. 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