Victoria Chang

In the collection

14

That two shells could be connected at their centers is a new thought I’ve never had. The way the canvas with its colors now turns into cubes. My life has been livid with itself for too long. The way out of my life is to fall out of the bottom of the old one. The way af Klint’s swans lost their faces right away. All this time, we were told to find yourself. The self was only a rumor. Maybe we were supposed to be with our dimensions. So that we could become different shapes within the same shape. Like mid-morning within morning. Yesterday, I heard the neighbors shouting, go wait at 29th street! Then later, just throw it away! I couldn’t hear anything else but, it was so good that you did that. Sometimes writing a poem feels like this. You put language together but the context is missing. Just the crisis remains. How you only hear something splash behind you. Sometimes living feels like this. You live your life, but the context is missing. You think it’s the context that you need. But when it arrives, there’s too much story and violence. …

Victoria Chang

Caretakers — died in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, one after another. One didn’t show up because her husband was in prison. Most others watched the clock. Time breaks for the living eventually and they can walk out of doors. The handle of time’s door is hot for the dying. What use is a door if you can’t exit? A door that can’t be opened is called a wall. My father is on the other side of the wall. Tomatoes are ripening on the other side. I can see them through the window that also can’t be opened. A window that can’t be opened is just a see-through wall. Sometimes we’re on the inside like a plane. Most of the time, we’re on the outside like doggie day care. I don’t know if the tomatoes are the new form of his language or if they’re simply for eating. I can’t ask him because on the other side, there are no words. All I can do is stare at the nameless bursting tomatoes and know they have to be enough. …

Victoria Chang

My Mother’s Teeth—died twice, once in 1965, all pulled out from gum disease. Once again on August 3, 2015. The fake teeth sit in a box in the garage. When she died, I touched them, smelled them, thought I heard a whimper. I shoved the teeth into my mouth. But having two sets of teeth only made me hungrier. When my mother died, I saw myself in the mirror, her words in a ring around my mouth, like powder from a donut. Her last words were in English. She asked for a Sprite. I wonder whether her last thought was in Chinese. I wonder what her last thought was. I used to think that a dead person’s words die with them. Now I know that they scatter, looking for meaning to attach to like a scent. My mother used to collect orange blossoms in a small shallow bowl. I pass the tree each spring. …

Victoria Chang

Suppose the stars are just our grief reflected back to us, proof that grief sometimes forgets its source, that it can find dead things no matter how distant. Everyone arrives one day and asks, is this it? And the stars answer back with more stars. I wonder if Agnes started at the bottom or at the top, if she went left to right or right to left. There’s no use in wondering if the canvas was on the floor or on a table. To ask questions is to be distracted by point of view. Point of view has a terrible memory. I’ve looked at photos scrolling up and over, zooming in and out, and realize it is not love I want, just the ability to zoom back out. A woman loses herself when she can no longer zoom out. Agnes knew that love exists because of the distance of starlight. That desire is the only thing with nerve endings. That it drips. That it dries faster in the desert. She knew to paint it vertically but to hang it horizontally. …

Victoria Chang

Two swans turn into four swans. As if each swan yearned for time but time just multiplied into other swans. In a moment, everything will try to be red, and it will look like fall again. The trees take care of their own salvation, wrote Charles Wright. But we keep cutting them down while they are kneeling. Fifty-three falls doesn’t seem like many chances to save the trees. Maybe salvation is the leaves falling off, the moment of detachment, the first drift in wind. Maybe memory takes care of itself once we stop trying to save it. The fact that they’re not the same leaves returning and falling each year means God moves around. Maybe God too is in search of salvation. I have cheated, I have looked ahead. In a few more paintings, the swans will no longer resemble swans. Then we are all cheaters. We are born knowing our endings. Once I waited for my mother to tell me what the blood meant. In my memories, my mother never speaks. So I still don’t know what the blood meant. We have seen blood so many times, yet it still surprises us. Maybe the blood was telling us we were fine without beauty. That we were fine giving birth to time. In a few more months, I will no longer be able to bleed. The bed will be already locked. I can’t wait to change my point of view from flesh to wind. …

Victoria Chang