Tina Chang, Brooklyn Poet Laureate, is the author of Half-Lit Houses (Four Way, 2004) and Of Gods & Strangers (Four Way, 2011) and coeditor of the Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (Norton, 2008). The poems that appear here are from her forthcoming poetry collection, Hybrida (Norton, 2019).
Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you
Everywhere I look I see him,
I have a right to fear for him,
though I have no right to claim his color.
His blackness is his to own and what will
my mouth say of that sweetness.
I’m without body but forming in the latticework
of blood cell and fret. Each threat pulls me upward
tempting and building me until my spine lifts into a column,
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