Jill Chan is the author of ten books including What To Believe: poems (2017). Her work has been published in Poetry New Zealand, Otoliths, Brief, Blue Fifth Review, The Tower Journal, and other magazines.
~
Everything becomes serious…
Everything becomes serious
when we are sick.
Life is a series of tiny misses.
Living has become difficult.
Not difficult like illness
but difficult like uncertainty,
like accident, its aftermath.
You are my uncertain hope.
Like morning, like dust.
Dust that wakes me.
~
“Dew Light”
after W.S. Merwin
I haven’t thought of the day.
I am only in it.
Today when everything
is present
even when it is not here.
I haven’t thought of dew,
how it settles majestically
on a thing that stays.
~
The Dark
I’ve become uncommonly afraid.
The littlest things rattle me.
I’m afraid of being left alone.
Where is the…
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What sleeping earth,
waking to the sound of morning,
has ever thought
about beginning? – {from} What to Believe, by Jill Chan
Just hours ago, I gathered my notes for my review of this book, What To Believe, by this person, Jill Chan. I’ve been an acolyte of her work since approximately 2004. Her restorative inquiries. Her flowering finalities. Her use of white space as glitter in the void. I remember receiving her first book, The Smell of Oranges, when I was at my poorest. How its scripture gave memory a place to miss. Recently, she graciously accepted my invitation to publish some poems of hers in volume first of {isacoustic*}. She wrote to me after submitting and suggested that I check out the poets Rogelio Guedea, Fisayo Adeyeye, and Maria Cinanni. I don’t know what to say. In this last hour, I’ve learned of Jill’s death. We’ve been a couple days, now, without her. Our losses race toward god. In her poem, Negatives, Jill says ‘Only adoration, / a fan of beauty, winds up alone / jealous of everything.’ Please, all- read her poems. Not because she is gone, but because reading is the language of the after. Read her poems, then be alone, then read them to a friend.
We wake to a further dream-
landscape-
and sleep in its map,
our ears its mouth.– Jill Chan
~
What To Believe, Jill Chan (2017)
i.
loss is lucky
to hear once
from absence
ii.
pregnant / reading fiction / to god
short
on symbolism
the anxious
sleep
to disguise
their fatigue
/ they are not
all here
my bread-shaped
birds
to get news
in heaven
from other parts
of heaven
do you know
what it’s like
god’s blood
has fleas
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through March 1st, Lulu is offering 15% off all print books with coupon code of FEB15
my latest everything I touch remembers being my hand is here:
~
some recent poems:
[returning]
childish nicknames for the messiah
these desperate meditations
on the ghost
of a sober
twin
I am not death but enter
like it
the church
of so many
canceled
spelling bees
to ask
whose punishment
for being born
am I
~
[the angel]
the sea
its oldest
orphanage
the angel
of a butterfly
from hell’s
first council
of sleep
watches
as we kiss
on the hand
our hunger
ate
~
[safe musics]
the amnesia
of my jack-in-the-box
gave way
to boomerangs
and motion
was the capital
of grief
~
[access musics]
I have a friend whose father called every basement the devil’s treehouse. a friend who’s here today because she hid a knife. whose brother met…
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two bodies of loneliness separated by the same beauty
(sea)
the eardrums of extra mothers
I move
tonight
(while he’s
asleep)
my son’s
finger
across
my throat
/ everyone
wants to publish
my sister’s
ghost
through March 1st, Lulu is offering 15% off all print books with coupon code of FEB15
my latest everything I touch remembers being my hand is here:
~
some recent poems:
[returning]
childish nicknames for the messiah
these desperate meditations
on the ghost
of a sober
twin
I am not death but enter
like it
the church
of so many
canceled
spelling bees
to ask
whose punishment
for being born
am I
~
[the angel]
the sea
its oldest
orphanage
the angel
of a butterfly
from hell’s
first council
of sleep
watches
as we kiss
on the hand
our hunger
ate
~
[safe musics]
the amnesia
of my jack-in-the-box
gave way
to boomerangs
and motion
was the capital
of grief
~
[access musics]
I have a friend whose father called every basement the devil’s treehouse. a friend who’s here today because she hid a knife. whose brother met god too early on the path to god and whose mother would jump from anything to fix a tooth…
there are people who don’t smoke
who want to
when it rains
~
[remote musics]
I write in this tongue and pray in another.
we sleep
and are kissed
by an ear
in three
beds: train, cow, frog.
if you’ve seen one roach,
you’ve seen them all. that’s where they come from.
~
[cord musics]
there is nothing for the brained cow. still,
you braid the sound of an eye
coming up for air.
hunger has one breast, is a doll
based on a painted toe. at the feast
of the sockless alien
are its babies foot and fall.
~
[span musics]
she joked
I remember
that the jelly
on her stomach
was the blood
of loneliness
and there he was
in all his
not yetness
the bent chuckle
of our boy
his brain, even then
thieving
the loss, his muscle, godsmoke-
he’s eight, now, and my palms
hum
if I hold him
too long
but clarity
is a weeping
spine, a deep
weapon
~
[untitled]
squeeze
my shoulder
I think
bird
then species
of bird
plural
of deer
and species
of god
~~~~~
also, please check out volume first and second of {isacoustic*}:
first-
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second-
http://www.lulu.com/shop/barton-smock/isacoustic-volume-second/paperback/product-23543831.html
kingsoftrain 