Two Poems (A Debt, What Is Modern)
Two new poems by Victoria Chang from the High/Low issue of the LARB Quarterly Journal, no.29.
By Victoria ChangMarch 27, 2021
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THIS PIECE APPEARS IN THE HIGH/LOW ISSUE OF THE LARB QUARTERLY JOURNAL, NO.29.
¤
A Debt
The bank is empty.
A cluster of birds live there.
The birds are all gold,
but they can fly like dollars.
They are lawless birds
glorified by all our poems.
If you look closely
at the ones in the corner,
some of them have human lips.
What Is Modern
Mass graves are modern.
I caught up with the future,
the metal trees are silent
as they wait for us.
The future isn’t modern.
It worries it won’t arrive.
¤
LARB Contributor
Victoria Chang is the author of OBIT, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN Voelcker Award, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. Her latest book is The Trees Witness Everything (2022). She is the incoming Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech.
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