Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
JENNIFER CHANG

The Lovely Theresa

Around eight p.m., an unidentified woman called 911 saying she had seen a man of Blake’s description walking naked into the water. It was the last in a series of heroic gestures he made for the lovely Theresa.


I have left the city. I will grow old
a radiant shadow

and learn again

                         all I do not know:

high voices ghosting
the equinox,

             a sand dune     too dark

to cross

even in moonlight.

What creature cries
with such joy?

            I call out to the winter

and hear my voice
calling back to me.

                                    I think I see you

                                 ~

in the glittering sea:

                                    gold hazard of the waves,
                                    a woman’s eyes sparking the cacophony!

Churn and release,
that’s memory
                       or the sea

at work

to trouble the tender-inclined.
I’m wedded to an origin

not my own, a loose-leaf promise
to acquit you of sorrow, so
                                               I’ll watch you

cull the tides until the ocean’s yours.

                                                           Desire, too,

feeds the labor of dew and beatitude,

             lovely Theresa.

I have come far for you: two trains

and two shores, and soon two cities shall forget me.

But if the apricot tree does not exist?

                                 ~

So the wisdom of the pop song dissolves

                                    O—O—O—,

I have only a sound for you
like one hand
                        closing over another,

minutest noise, this murmur that follows me

into the sea.     I remember
the silence of your hair,

the flaxen fields you hid from me

and each grief burrowing underneath,
a small trembling animal.

The wisdom of the pop song

is to repeat      
                       and refrain. The singer stops singing

to listen to that black germ
of thought, a guitar considering

another melody.
                                    I think I see you

in the glittering sea.  end