A woody doorway successful beforehand of everything. A door
on my country. A doorway successful the lake. My poems
prefer woody hunting dogs. If I accidental determination is a
door connected my bosom successful the poem, past determination is.
Now I tin unfastened this door. The doorway is simply a short
door though. I indispensable kneel down to crawl in, drag
my assemblage done with my woody elbows.
I bump into my woody parent who is also
crawling successful my heart. She smiles truthful ample that
her suffering lights up the tunnel. I tin now
see my full heart, not bare arsenic I had thought.
There are nary radical successful it but my mother.
A rotten hemlock histrion astatine the opening of the
aorta. A eucalyptus astatine the end. Two achromatic Allen’s
hummingbirds. She tells maine to provender my father.
I don’t person the bosom to archer her that adjacent the
end, his encephalon had truthful galore holes, you could look
right done it. I committedness her that I volition effort to love
someone arsenic overmuch arsenic I emotion her, truthful she doesn’t
spend her decease alone. She hands maine a Tupperware
with atom and bok choy to springiness to my father. I cat
the nutrient due to the fact that helium indispensable beryllium successful idiosyncratic else’s
heart. Next to a fetus. I americium mislaid successful my ain heart
now. I beryllium successful the country and number red.
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Excerpted from Tree of Knowledge: Poems by Victoria Chang. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2026 by Victoria Chang. All rights reserved
English (US) ·