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  • 25 Lines or Fewer

Untitled #9, 1995

By Victoria Chang

After Agnes Martin

 

Agnes only had nine years to live. The angels must have begun to hover around her canvas like monkeys. This canvas has nine white thin strips between the red and blue ones. I’ve spent my life thinking about the blue ones, thinking they were the future. But the future was red all along. I sense something is ending but I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s the future. This morning, I looked at a large spiderweb above my car. When I returned 10 minutes later, the weaver was gone, the web dismantled, but my hands were still open. Maybe a life doesn’t matter so much as the feeling it leaves behind, whether anyone receives the feeling or not. Maybe our goal is to  spend all  the light. Since none  of us asked to  be born.



 

       

Poet Bio

Victoria Chang’s most recent book is Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (Milkweed Editions, 2021). She is a core faculty member at Antioch University’s Low-Residency MFA Program and lives in Los Angeles, California.

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