Ars Poetica as
Birdfeeder and Hummingbird

All winter I watched the empty feeder
and the God light pummel

its stained glass in a sieve.  No
hummingbirds, no

humorous little body with a tent stake
as a nose.

Look, little bird, how do you know, how
do you know

your brilliance is what I seek?  The way
you lance a honeysuckle’s 

heart, take the blood in your bill.  I wish
I knew how to punch 

a center, inch in and in, lance something
to death, that flowers and 

flowers light.  You in your array of vibrating
attire.  I am not  

a weed, I need your praise to survive. 
The field will consume me.

The field has chosen sides.  The field is
not hungry for the middling.

How I hate the field and what it sees, its
teeth digging out the ochre

of mediocre, what’s left but medi—a non,
a nothing, no-one.

O tiny bird—medicate me, convulse me,
punch holes in me so

 some of my light leaks out.

 First appeared in New England Review

Love Poem With Bicycles And A Hotel

The bike race starts and the starting makes me disappear again. 
Men in spandex, corporate logos, spokes, wheels,
so many sponsors—hearing aids, television channels. 
So much Spandex.  So many autographs that
never seem to fix anything.   

You drink from your water bottle up the first climb.  I am not scared. 
I am wild with pride.  Because I know you,
the man in the bike race.  I woke up knowing you. 
But I am not you.  In my dream, I am standing on the edge
of a bridge.  Hundreds of people clap
when I jump off.  I am not lit up.

They go in circles for five laps so fast they become one man. 
I’m afraid to yell your name. 
You might think you’re human and crash.
The sound of my voice means I must be alive.

I enter the hotel lobby, thousands of people circle booths. 
Plastic nametags around necks: Nancy Dell, Jim Smith.
Little bags stuffed with white papers on the environment. 
I am a hotel chair, row 67, 73 in.  Counting from the left. 
The Flamingo Room.  Do they know about the others across
the road?  Splitting the air on their carbon-fiber machines.

I am outside again.  Their legs show signs of work.  Some have
pulled out.  Some need stitches that will leak. 
Sweaty, they finish.  They shower.  They sleep.
Wake up, clip in, ride for six hours.  It gets dark.  It gets light. 
It gets dark again.  Then light.

The people in the hotel have long since returned to their rooms. 
In another city.  Train.  Casket.  I know what I must do—
try to hear the newspaper on the porch, hear the sprinkler
on a rainy morning, hear your breathing in mine.

First appeared in Triquarterly

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Copyright, Victoria Chang.
 All Rights Reserved by Author.