Valentines: Three Poems by E Yeon Chang 이연
Double Sonnet for WeWash Laundry & Cleaners
Mid-Season
Once again, I delay fate, choosing instead to play with hardened
fingers and a sunk voice. In my defense, Cavafy, it is exhausting
to be loved by me. How else to explain Michael Thomas, my favorite
rubber tree on his last leaves? A first draft pick, difficult to underwater
and yet, I manage! All the apps told me my biggest risk was root rot,
overwhelmed soil. Or perhaps I wanted to force familiarity through
shared parchedness. In my warmest dreams, you do not hurry me
in my last moments of cowardice. You allow the final easiness
of repeated motion, habits formed under scarcity. You understand
it is unfair to expect courage. My Alexandria I built without grace;
what I did unloved I still did well. Russell Drew Wilson Brees
the sansevieria I bought on suggestion flourishes under managed
expectations. Alex Anzalone the philodendron knows his mane
and is just glad for the attention. That is all to say, there is reliable
firmness, volume even, in unconcern. You have had its body, its red
lips too. So you grant me meekness, just once more. You let me
gasp and bumble before the down. When I awaken, I am exquisite
in defeat. I tend my little ground, name my beloved. He sprints
across a shrinking field, greets me wide armed & summer scented.
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About E Yeon Chang 이연
E Yeon Chang is a current MFA candidate and Goldwater Fellow at New York University. A former Editor-in-Chief of West 10th, she has received recognition from the Academy of American Poets, C.V. Starr Research Fund, and Palette Poetry‘s Emerging Poets Prize. E Yeon’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, Nat. Brut, Pleiades, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. A fan of the Saints and DK Metcalf’s social media presence, E Yeon dreams of becoming the first and only Poet Laureate of the NFL. Find her online at changeyeon.com