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POETRY

essay on distance

Juliana Chang

when I was little I thought Taiwan became a country because it
broke off the side of China like a chunk of bread, and the people
on the chunk just stayed on and the people on the loaf just
shrugged and kept going with their lives. I suppose we took it
one step further in the early years, became a breadcrumb family
in the Bay.

once it became clear we had to go back, we lugged our couch to
the dumpster and exited the new country piecemeal: father first,
then suitcase. daughter, dog, mother. between the bad Chinese
and dust mites, my migration twisted into the inevitable
prophecy that it usually never is. here, a child that could not stay.

now, alone again in this old-new place—I take photos of spring
flowers like my mother. I wear loose pants, like my mother. I
don’t cry in front of my mother, just like my mother. 

last year in the windy city, I walked around carrying a birthday
card in my hands until I couldn’t feel it anymore. my mother
matches socks and I don’t. in the early years, I brought friends
onto the porch and told them my family owned the grey cows
grazing the hills behind our house. to prove my point, I gave
them all names.

Ni Chiang-huai, c. 1934
Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American poet. Her debute poetry chapbook, INHERITANCE, was the winner of the 2020 Vella Prize and published with Paper Nautilus Press in 2021. Juliana's work appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Chestnut Review, diode poetry journal, and other journals. She is a student at Harvard Law School, where she is a Presidential Public Service Fellow and an editor of the ,em.Harvard Law Review.

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