The Window
by Mary Jean Chan
Once in a lifetime, you will gesture
at an open window, tell the one who
detests the queerness in you that dead
daughters do not disappoint, free your
sore knees from inching towards a kind
of reprieve, declare yourself genderless
as hawk or sparrow: an encumbered body
let loose from its cage. You will refuse your
mother’s rage, her spit, her tongue heavy
like the heaviest of stones. Your mother’s
anger is like the sun, which is like love,
which is the easiest thing — even on the
hardest of days. You will linger, knowing
that this standing before an open window
is what the living do, that they sometimes
reconsider at the slightest touch of grace.
From The 2017 National Poetry Competition. Reproduced with kind permission of The Poetry Society.
Forward Prizes for Poetry
Shortlisted for Best Single Poem 2019
Flèche
Mary Jean Chan
About Mary Jean Chan
Mary Jean Chan is the author of Flèche (Faber & Faber, 2019), which won the Costa Book Award for Poetry. Chan co-edited the anthology 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan, and is a judge for the 2023 Booker Prize. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan will be the 2023-24 Judith E. Wilson Poetry Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Bright Fear is Chan’s second collection.
Mary Jean Chan was interviewed on writing craft in Wasafiri Magazine with Preti Taneja. For the National Centre of Writing, Chan discussed how their work explores language and writing from a multilingual perspective.
Forward Prizes History:
- 2017 Forward Prizes for Best Single Poem, shortlisted for ‘//’ (Ambit)
