Video still by Hồng-Ân Trương.

Tell me I am real, place your lens there.

Ensure I am rooted as safely as a gardenia,

in the aftermath of our intentions. My footprint 

steps on the neck of these tides, my grip 

shivers against the camera, a shutter moves 

with a candid eye and captures me so vividly.

The light never held me willingly, 

a participant, a gasp. When you find me, 

make sure to tell me I’m the subject. 

Simple sounds ring and record. Tell me 

who took a pen to detail the secrets of the past. 

I am the one riding through the machine, all 

the subtle parts that murmured appear now 

full of fury. I am destined for the earth, 

a ball of fire, dropping like coal into the sea, 

all the parts of me once hidden, now diamond

precious, a light to be caught. Little spark, 

little spark, call me by my name. 



Tina Chang

TINA CHANG is the author of the poetry collections LION (2026, W.W. Norton) and Hybrida (2019, W.W. Norton) which NPR named, "one of the most important books of poetry to come along in years,” as well as Of Gods & Strangers (2011) and Half-Lit Houses (2004). Co-editor of the Norton anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, she is the recipient of the 2026 Poets & Writers Writers for Writers Award, an Academy of American Poets Laureate fellowship, as well as awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, among many others. In 2010, she was named the first female Poet Laureate of Brooklyn and she served in this role for over a decade. She is Professor of English at Binghamton University.