tm ss bx js my as amd rl cf
as always, your hearts sustain me.
a c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
created on the unceded, ancestral, occupied territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Stรณ:lล , and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
(c) a m a n d a w a n 2 0 1 9
# made ig:
of
of wood & water. @woodandwater_art
too yielding to break under weight of winter snow too stubborn to wither in stiff summer heat autumn leaves await their fall, the wind a sonic solitude, pushing death upon branches making room for death towards life towards death. newborn clouds an enormous remembrance of water once past, dragging us into life towards death towards life, cool street puddles a wet world transcribing each movement of birds against the sky. i have long given up finding my parents in the stories i read, or searching for grandmother’s swim to refuge (a tale fifty-eight years old) in the chlorine-drenched water that stains my skin when mother insists on swimming lessons so that i learn how not to drown—her way of teaching a child how to remember to forget. each stroke reminds me that this body was not made to carry happiness, and something in the way fall leaves burn and carry on anyway, glowing orange and red in surprise at having survived, signalling goodbye until we can help each other breathe again, lifts my arms through each lap, yet another translation of migrating birds that i have learned to love by miming their wings across autumnal puddles, me swimming in my longing to become like them, flying through body memory away and back again.
n o v e m b e r c h i l d
xi
ix
you, already swimming against the fear i know my infant self caught inside, you, small body swimming inside our own, you. small pulse returning home. you, a home returning to its small pulse against fear. you, my infant self a small body willing its pulse into a home, you—a will against the fear caught inside our bodies.
b a b y
vii
v
and beginning with mountain passes, ripple of sand beneath sea, a being-apartness of tulips pressed against the wind, a pondering of heart and endless heart in the warmth of your care, our hands a memory of warm fabric and earth. questions of what we ask of the moon. the smell of orange and mango caught entangled between your arms and mine, you sound like memory but feel like promise, luck for fire, beloved, oh beloved, ancestral stars blown through with fulfilled desire. and. and.
&
( f o r t m )
iii
In the enclosed darkness memory is fugitive. — Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, dictee p. 118
a w a y a n d b a c k a g a i n