POETRY: ELLEN CHANG-RICHARDSON

​NYCTALOPIA

n. the inability to see in dim light
 
 
Reason drips and to me it speaks
to my radical, lost dreams it shrieks yet suits
on Wall Street they say, they say,
 
what are you doing, where are you going?
Compartmentalize these things.
 
My throat closes and wonders, when
will the cared-for things, will the weather-worn things break
from their binds, my stomach pushes my insides in two
billion knots of plastic rouge.
 
That should be enough money to buy
a roof, that should be enough money to buy
a noose, that should be enough money to //
 
Reason slips and to me it speaks
to my sweet, soft, youthful delusions it shrieks yet suits
on Wall Street they say, they say,
 
come play, come stay!
Compartmentalize your dreams.

TELL ME THESE THINGS AND I SHALL TELL YOU MINE
​
I was taught shyness,
they ask for a volunteer
 
I was taught propriety, see
women are not meant to go there
 
I was taught silence, so to
stand up for myself and other people
 
of colour means that I feel the need
to say sorry, to you. For
 
simply being, well, here.
 
Yet the world is clearer
from here. From here, from this
 
place where I happen to sit
I might just believe that I might, just be
 
a person whose skin tone does not make
me, the definition of who or
 
what I am, perceived— by you
so, here            is where you may
 
find me. Where you may, because I say, stare
into my eyes and watch me
 
as I stand up to you, calmly shore up
to you, hands clenched in
 
to fists at the insolence that you
are unaware, that you are.

​Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet, writer and editor of Taiwanese and Cambodian-Chinese descent. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Unlucky Fours (Anstruther Press), Assimilation Tactics (Coven Editions) and snap, pop, performance (Gap Riot Press); the founder of Little Birds Poetry; co-founder/co-curator of Riverbed Reading Series; and a member of the poetry collective VII. Her work is forthcoming in The Fiddlehead, untethered magazine, third coast magazine, among others. Ellen currently lives and works on the traditional unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinabeg First Nation (Ottawa, Ontario). www.ehjchang.com