"The mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings deep within the body of her daughter" by Mary Jean Chan

[View this email on a browser]( [Forward to a friend]( [facebook-icon]( [tumblr-icon]( [twitter-icon]( September 2, 2019 [The mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings deep within the body of her daughter]( [Mary Jean Chan]( after Jacqueline Rose / after Chen Chen she fed me clothed me kept me safe albeit in excess five layers in spite of subtropical winter heat so much to eat I needed digestive pills to ward off the stomach’s sharp protest how not to utter the un- grateful thing: that I am irrevocably her object that the poet who wrote this saved my life: Sometimes, parents & children become the most common of strangers Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again How I wished that street would appear I kept trying to make her proud of my acumen for language these words have not been for nothing I wrote to find the street where we might meet again & now there is relief guilt or blame but they are nearly always misplaced you are born into the slip- stream of your mother’s unconscious if someone had told her that the last thing a young mother needs is false decency courage & cheer she might not have hurt us both but what to do with remorse & love that comes unbidden like a generous rain how to accept her care after the storm is there a point at which the mother is redeemed the child forgiven can the origin story be re-told transfigured into the version where the garden is always paradise & no one need ever fall out of grace [Like this on Facebook]( [Share via Twitter]( Copyright © 2019 Mary Jean Chan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 2, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. [Chan reads "The mother finds her own wild, lost beginnings within the body of her daughter."]( About This Poem “I wrote this poem last year as I was completing my debut poetry collection. I was re-reading [Chen Chen](’s [When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities]( (BOA Editions, 2017), alongside Jacqueline Rose’s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Faber, 2018). The voices of Chen and Rose became a kind of co-mingling, which, alongside my own thoughts, eventually took the form of these thin, compressed, rivulet-type poems I had first come across in Emily Berry’s second collection Stranger, Baby (Faber, 2017). I wanted to explore what happens in the aftermath of reconciliation, especially between a mother and daughter whose coming out as queer severely tested their relationship for several years.” —Mary Jean Chan [Mary Jean Chan]( Mary Jean Chan’s debut poetry collection is Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019). She is an editor of Oxford Poetry and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes University. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Mary Jean currently lives in London. Photo Credit: Adrian Pope [Fleche]( Poetry by Chan [Flèche]( (Faber & Faber, 2019) "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party" by Chen Chen [read-more]( "OBIT [Memory]" by Victoria Chang [read-more]( "So Chinese Girl" by Dorothy Chan [read-more]( September Guest Editor: Eduardo C. Corral Thanks to [Eduardo C. Corral](, author of Guillotine (Graywolf Press, 2020), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month’s weekdays. Read a [Q&A with Corral]( about his curatorial approach this month and find out more about our [guest editors for the year.]( Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today’s poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. [make a one-time donation]( [illustration]( [Small-Blue-RGB-poets.org-Logo]( Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit [Poets.org](. You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click [here](. © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038