[Voice Mail—died on June 24, 2009,]
the voice mail from my father said
Transcription Beta (low confidence),
Hello hi um I may be able to find
somebody to reduce the size of the
car OK I love you. The Transcription
Beta had low self-esteem. It wandered
into the river squinting and came back
blind. The Transcription Beta could not
transcribe dementia. My father really
said, I'll fold the juice, not I love you.
Is language the broom or what's being
swept? When I first read I love you,
some hand spun a fine thread around
my lungs and tightened. Because my
father had never said that to me before.
In the seconds before realization of the
error, I didn't feel love, but panic. We
read to inherit the words, but something
is always between us and the words.
Until death, when comprehension and
disappearance happen simultaneously.
Feature Date
- June 9, 2020
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Chang
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Margaret Malloy
Victoria Chang’s books include OBIT, Barbie Chang, The Boss, Salvinia Molesta, and Circle. Her children’s picture book, Is Mommy?, was illustrated by Marla Frazee and published by Beach Lane Books/Simon & Schuster. It was named a New York Times Notable Book. Her middle grade novel, Love Love will be published by Sterling Publishing in 2020. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles and is the program chair of Antioch’s Low-Residency MFA Program.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.