volume third of {isacoustic*} is slated to print in late May. I had been in contact with the poet Jill Chan, who sent me three poems for volume first, to run a review in volume third of her book of poems, What To Believe. As I prepared to write the review late last night, I learned she had passed away just days ago. I don’t have words. I wish we weren’t so small.
I would like to publish in volume third any remembrances, poems, asides by those Jill and her work touched. I am making this volume of {isacoustic*} free to anyone requesting, and will be sending it to all taking part in the honoring, to all contributors published in the volume, and to all contributors of the past two volumes.
If you knew, by which I mean know, Jill, by person, spirit, or by work…you can send such remembrances to isacousticsubmissions@gmail.com in any form you see fit, and I will get them into volume third. Would prefer to receive them within the next two months.
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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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
kingsoftrain 