Robin Rosen Chang
Sometimes I Imagine the Universe
inverted, reeling you back
to me, almost-child. You,
a pebble that fell, leaving
my womb empty as the cradle
in the closet.
Sometimes I imagine
you’re sky, a star-speckled tureen,
and a capsized world
could pour you into my body.
Sometimes you’re waves
above my head, churning,
across clouds
or the deep sea, where a humpback whale births
its calf. I imagine
its cries, those low, slow pulses
how sometimes they sound
like echoes of your heart
beating inside mine.
Robin Rosen Chang is the author of The Curator's Notes (Terrapin Books, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Journal, Diode, North American Review, The Cortland Review, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Robin received a 2023 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in New Jersey, where she teaches writing at Montclair State University and tutors.
9.2