Early Work

Poems by

Jill Chan

Also by Jill Chan

These Hands Are Not Ours (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2009)

Becoming Someone Who Isn't (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2007)

The Smell of Oranges (Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, 2003)

Copyright © 2011 Jill Chan

All rights reserved.

ISBN:1456591940 ISBN-13:978-1456591946

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments i

2000 1

2001 6

2002 9

2003 12

2004 21

2005 22

2006 27

2007 40

About The Author 47

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Some poems in this book have previously appeared in the following publications:

Concelebratory Shoehorn Review (U.S.A.), From East to West (U.S.A.), Spin, Thunder Sandwich (U.S.A.)

I am grateful to their editors.

i

2000

Driving

Your left hand

on the gears

and your right

on the steering wheel.

Only last night

I was holding them

tight in mine,

a congruence

I’ve come to know.

Now

I watch

fascinated by

their independence.

When you stroked my hair,

what were you thinking?

1

Movement

1.

I never really

understood giving,

until now.

The self reposed

on the brink

of sinking.

To lose words

like water

and not caring

that they could

move or kill

the way headlight

2

heads toward light

even if you don’t

drive.

2.

You know the sea

is five minutes away.

But still, here,

air slips between

the curve of a jug’s handle

where your grip used to be.

The way movement

doesn’t always cover space

3

and hesitation

unwraps like a gift.

3.

The mannered folding

of shirts--face down,

sleeves crossed, and cut

below the heart

where everything that isn’t there

becomes part of you anyway.

When the clothes you are wearing

mean less to you than

the act of putting them on--

the armstretch,

the buttoning up,

4

the indigent body

settling in.

5

2001

Perfection

for S

it is so quiet it hurts

like the light you so

carefully let into your eyes

6

Appeal

Clouds

needed to be named

to mark

our hold of the sky.

On the plane

to Sydney,

(cirrus outside),

I feel it is like going to

a place and

never finding yourself in it

because you’re always up here

accepting that you’ll never

start naming lesser things.

7

Way

In the car today,

we talked about immortality,

that word that utterance negates,

for voice is fluid, temporal

though dreaming.

We have been where

we would blush at being remembered--

not placed, not returned

but coming round

this corner.

8

2002

To Be Honest

Important things

such as eye colour, and whether

to write or speak

regardless of ability

I stay for now

divergent

*

I’ve gone back to trusting only that which I can handle--

giving away leaf veins as if I owned them

There is the question of branches

I rehearse breaking them at every opportunity

9

both hands sturdy, eyes involuntarily

closing at the point

when the branch

snaps

10

Tale

So it is in your brain

You make good use of all the circuitry

the way you always feel head forward into cradle

I said I’ve been thinking of you

and you went really quiet as if suddenly

you were thinking too

The vessels carry something into somewhere

both ways

I seem to clearly say

once sure

the feeling doesn’t mean so much

Rain rising into clouds

Thunder grumbling after lightning

11

2003

Isle

You let me read your favourite story.

I read it aloud to you.

You read me as if I don’t know meanings.

We’ve read each other so well

there refuse to be meanings.

As I go on, my voice falls.

No longer steep, I become adept

at never forcing you to listen

to yourself listening to my voice.

“Projection. Flat, rectangular.”

Our inner room is too small,

12

switching senses too soon.

I come to your part now mine.

13

Coming Home After Dark

Is it any wonder that sometimes

your most real, your most unpretentious,

your least barrier to honesty

that you put into words,

the more people ignore.

It is as if they sense

your imbalance, your

inordinate passion

they couldn’t as yet

unfeel for themselves.

They fear

they don’t want you crossing the street

at night. Wait till the night

crosses into you indistinguishable.

Lamp post, streetlight--

14

all this inconvenient seeing.

15

Far

You said people you’ve known

to come over during Christmas

came over to our house.

Our house?

I seem to claim too much

of what isn’t mine.

The house. I think of the narrow stair,

the large rooms, all that space

I couldn’t occupy.

What do they say

about leaving your heart

where you were,

uninvited but made

welcome.

16

Twelve Words Spoken by a Poem

If only I could

condense

and love like water

loves a vessel

17

String

Freedom like darkness

is eloquent.

Both stagger

when made to roam:

one bound to earth

by the string

the other unrolled.

18

Alienation

There is such a thing as building one's own wall

to protect the outsiders from themselves.

You must not pity the whole nation:

Little green people on their rafts

managing to say the insideout thing.

The elliptical vision is clear,

unblemished by bent rays,

and rhythm.

The blackness you see is not dark.

It breaks out of your eyes

and waves its shining cloth.

So many things you love are black.

19

So little you understand.

Your heart is pumping inside you,

in darkness.

20

2004

Wind, Open

Stark, a star, dark?

wind that is held,

spoken to, greatly

this empty, gaining

nothing, if itself,

is to itself

how you flew

into the far

star, spark, speak

21

2005

Stopping By

The river in our own

waving, knowing

full well the way

slack cuts more slack,

the way rope snakes into itself,

the last in the affair

of remembering.

In this slowness, breath

becomes living,

believing in the rise

and fall of the body.

The stones are calling to awaken!

Pick one

22

and leave

the impossible ones behind.

23

Engine

If the engine of memory

runs on our ability

to steer towards endlessness,

towards the daily silences

of permission,

then you and I

with each held-out hand

will reach the crossing

before dark.

24

Repeating To Myself

Remember

the few bare trees still here.

I walk

to know the landscape,

the many ways

you turn to leave.

25

Gift

You let this gift

fall out of your hand,

as it did from its giver.

You take this gift

as if from anyone you know,

tear it out of the wrapping

of all other gifts

everyone else gave.

26

2006

Poems

I mourn the lost forms

traveling through a tunnel

caught

in some past

or future journey.

Perhaps it’s

more simple than that,

more freeing:

They’ve gone like sleep.

You remember none of it,

only that it’s never failed you.

27

In Which She Walks Away

I cannot know

as much as you say

you know me.

It is a renouncement

to be loved this long,

this sacredly

without my knowing.

I hope to want to follow

where you go

but already

you follow me,

else we go round in circles,

this never-ending

meeting in parts.

Forgive me those years

28

you’ve known me

without myself,

wherefore have they gone

except always arriving

in your steadfastness,

my failure.

We shall be opposites,

the first ships

to sail with the ocean

as their destination.

29

Moving

When I was small,

my father invented a game

to play with me.

We were moving;

all the furniture still to be placed

inside the house.

The spacious rooms,

smell of wood;

floors looking to be walked upon.

The carpets colourful,

like modernist abstract art.

We would laugh and shriek,

running and jumping on the shapes.

30

White, green—

for resting a while.

Red, blue—run for your life.

Soon, we would spill

to the other rooms,

changing the rules

as we went along.

We wanted to fill them

with newly-drawn things,

create ways

of gazing into the old.

31

Origin

Take me back

to what

need not be said

to the silence before

the darkest beginning

32

Memory

You are waiting

for the sun,

the ways it rises

again and again.

These days, time is the matter

on your mind.

You forget too much.

I hope you’d never need

to be bravest

as memory falls away.

You leave a part

of the house empty,

33

opening

every door.

34

Reading

You are saving

these small hours

reading by a light.

There’s an hour

hiding in the corners

of this room.

You push it

away

with every word.

Another hour

wraps around

your shoulders.

The silent lines

35

it leaves

behind.

The last is waiting

beside the desk

in all the ways

you will be awake.

36

The Night

In order to be

in the night,

one has to close their eyes,

raise the best sight,

see through

to the present in the dark.

37

Poems

They slip

out of the darkness

into a deep

not quite here

not quite further than

your nearest word

38

Dreamers

how many versions of you

do I see

not counting

the sleeping one

whom all the dreamers

think they know

holding your beauty

to their bed

39

2007

Poet

It is in the way

you stray too far,

without a need

to fill any hunger

(least of all your own),

or to take anything

you want,

any opportunity to lie

without speaking,

and break up language

like water

until only

thirst remains.

40

Losing

1.

Now it is starting

to be difficult.

Look at the rest of me

departing.

2.

The places

to illumine.

Let us consider

where they go.

41

3.

Losing

makes

its feet

known.

4.

Perhaps there is

only love.

Nothing

I have to bring.

42

5.

You leave

once again.

Just to keep things

simple.

6.

What beauty,

this waking

without

a face.

43

7.

These words

I won’t say,

I give them

away.

8.

No need

for making sense.

Or wanting

to arrive.

44

Lights

Lights in the room

seem to be brighter,

my hands quite restless

to hold something

that isn’t mine,

just to feel my lack,

days that leave openly

though given to being here

like nights that remember

only to begin.

45

Time

You thought that today

was yesterday.

What does it matter?

It is only time.

You don’t remember

how old you were

when you were young.

Where’s the face

that knew you,

that now looks for you

in the fading?

46

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jill Chan is a poet based in Auckland, New Zealand. Her poems have been published in MiPOesias, foam:e, fieralingue Poets’ Corner, Tears in the Fence, Blue Fifth Review, Asia and Pacific Writers Network, Otoliths, Broadsheet, JAAM, Poetry New Zealand, Brief, Takahe, Trout, Deep South, Southern Ocean Review, Blackmail Press, and other magazines. She is the author of three collections of poetry: These Hands Are Not Ours (2009), winner of the Earl of Seacliff Poetry Prize; Becoming Someone Who Isn't (2007); and The Smell of Oranges (2003), all published by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop. She is one of the poets featured in the New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive.

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