Poem
Mary Jean Chan
Love for the Living
Love for the Living
Love for the Living
What does it mean to want to live?Only this: to refuse to see the mouth’s anguish
as a sign to step out of an open window.
To refuse to be twenty-six and afraid of leaving
one city for another. To refuse to be a bomb
shelter for your mother’s fears. What is it like
to believe the night isn’t a cemetery
for bodies like yours? Like this: the joy at a spiral
of rainbow bunting scattered like relief
across a lit sky. The ache of pleasure when
your mother mentions your lover’s name.
The way you notice, incredulous,
when no one seems to care how you stand
in the open, kissing and holding hands.
© 2018, Mary Jean Chan
From: A Hurry of English
Publisher: ignition press, Oxford
From: A Hurry of English
Publisher: ignition press, Oxford
Mary Jean Chan
(Hong_kong, 1990)
Mary Jean Chan is a poet, editor and critic whose work is at once incisive and nuanced, intimate and international. She came second in the 2017 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2017 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. A selection of Chan’s poems were published in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII, and her ignitionpress pamphlet, A Hurry of English, was the 2018 Summer Poetry Bo...
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Poems of Mary Jean Chan
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Love for the Living
What does it mean to want to live?Only this: to refuse to see the mouth’s anguish
as a sign to step out of an open window.
To refuse to be twenty-six and afraid of leaving
one city for another. To refuse to be a bomb
shelter for your mother’s fears. What is it like
to believe the night isn’t a cemetery
for bodies like yours? Like this: the joy at a spiral
of rainbow bunting scattered like relief
across a lit sky. The ache of pleasure when
your mother mentions your lover’s name.
The way you notice, incredulous,
when no one seems to care how you stand
in the open, kissing and holding hands.
From: A Hurry of English
Love for the Living
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