Blackbird Archive
← v12n1, Spring 2013
Poetry · Volume 12, Number 1

[There are two ways maybe four there are]

Victoria Chang

There are two ways maybe four there are

                        two ways of seeing one way maybe

            not our way maybe the boss’s way maybe the boss is

right maybe we are wrought

wrong ruined maybe the boss knows

                        the boss is god is good and we are

            made to be maids maybe the boss knows

why the storm makes the sky look

like a toilet flushing why the twisting sky today

                       looks like someone like us should

           mop it up why a twister in the sky mistakes

a cross on a steeple for an X

to hit why a town named Joplin has rain like javelins

                       and humans scattering why

           the boy was sucked right out the roof

of the car like a root

politicsviolenceclass
Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang is the author of four books of poetry including Barbie Chang (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), and The Boss (McSweeney’s, 2013), which won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. Her picture book, Is Mommy? (Beach Lane Books, 2015) was illustrated by Marla Frazee and was named a New York Times Notable Children’s Book of 2015 . She was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017 and teaches poetry at Chapman University and the Orange County School of the Arts.