Herbarium by Stephanie Chang

Because hunger stirred in my stomach, small and violent, begging to be held.

Herbarium

by Stephanie Chang

Because I hated what winter, cruel and astonishing,
required of me. In the red snow, I picture white irises

that detonate in my sleep. I don’t actually know what
they sound like; I trust you. For centuries, I exiled myself

to this bed, painted on the walls the flowers plum blossom,
lily, limonium. At night, I stare at the square of a woman

I stole from my father’s wallet. I tuck myself into concrete.
In my dreams, a snowstorm photocopies a field of faces.

Blue and brilliant flashes of light. I pluck off their petals
around the apartment, as if all these adversaries, too,

will explode without me knowing. Springtime and so
I return home to my mother. On the coffee table,

above the streets laced in black ice, she concentrates
on the thousand pieces of a botanical jigsaw puzzle.

It’s incomplete. Algae and wildflowers void of parts
and holding the hot tea she spilled everywhere

between those green bodies. Because hunger stirred
in my stomach, small and violent, begging to be held.

Come on. It wants a name. I wonder if you loved me more
before I had a name. I always loved easier than I let on.

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Read our interview with Poet of the Week, Stephanie Chang, wherein she discusses writing about assimilation, mothers, and the role of religion in poetry About this, she says:

“I like to think that religion has exhausted itself in my poems at last, that I’ve outwitted it. If it’s an inheritance, I’d like to think it spent. Religion was exhausting, the show and dance, there’s always an outpouring, an excess of sin now transmutated into salvation, enough to induce awe. Yes, I do feel born into it. I’m not a religious person today, but it’s a sticky thing, freshly cauterized. Although there were certainly moments of violence and growing up, violation, I don’t see it playing a violent role now so much as a stubborn one. Like a spam caller.”