Poems by C. Dale Young and Victoria Chang
New work by faculty member C. Dale Young and alumna Victoria Chang (poetry, ’05) appears online at Diode.
Learning to Walk
C. Dale Young
The halo, still fixed to my head then,
pinned to the calvarium’s fine table
of bone, almost helped me to balance.
And balance is such a fine quality.
No matter how many times my mother
recounts for me how I first learned
to walk, I have no recollection of it.
But I remember the second time I learned,
because learning to walk as an adult,
like learning anything one should learn
as a child, involves shame and embarrassment,
those snickering sisters who love to watch you fail.
To clutch the two poles alongside you, poles
parallel to the ground you stand on, you wish
you were a gymnast or at least studying
to be a gymnast. Instead, you feel
the terrible weight of yourself grappling with
the weight of yourself, one final and awful
proof for gravity. Shouldn’t a man who has wings
be immune from such things, be immune from gravity?
Shouldn’t he be able to hover in place, the wings
vibrating the way a bee’s wings do?
The need to stand, the desperate need to walk,
was embarrassing. I said so many prayers then.
I prayed to any god I thought would listen.
Read more of C. Dale’s poems at Diode
I only knew dictators I loved the unilateral directions
Victoria Chang
I only knew dictators I loved the unilateral directions
the high diction my father sat
in his office dictating his thoughts about
meetings with bosses my father dictated
to me to eat tomatoes my father was dictated to
by his boss the bush blooms flowers
each spring pink ones open then the blooms fall
the bush resumes being a bush
a boss changes seasonally too a boss can turn into
a dictator and back again the boss sees
everything we play hide and seek with
the boss but she always finds
us we always hide in the same place
my office faces the boss’s office but our
doors don’t align some days when I can no longer
lie I shut my door and cry the rain
always gives me away when I play hide and seek
with my two-year-old she lies
on the ground and covers her face she thinks
I can’t see her
