Blackbird Archive
← v8n1, Spring 2009
Poetry · Volume 8, Number 1

Dear P. XXIII

Victoria Chang

The sun sends its wires of heat onto your

face, stops on your cheek, coiling into a

present tense of red. I am a hungry bird

that murmurs love, that murmurs more.

When I see red, it is not blood or war. It is

not the spur on the point of fish hooks.

The red here is a tributary towards you.

It is a ruby of lunar impact. A stone of

sixty sides. I want to drink the ruddy rust,

taste your cheek that feels like church

against my lips, your terrestrial material,

the softest my mouth has found—this skin

that dies each year, this sheen that blights,

that barriers me from you.

lovechildhoodbody
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.