Bearing Down
Video still by Hồng-Ân Trương
00:04:48:08 (2017)
Everyone turned when we asked who had arrived
first to paradise. We walked side by side,
as centuries of soldiers did. There was bloodshed
and still the sun rose and we called every beginning
paradise. We uttered joy into our hands, greedy
to hear how it lasted. I sipped from my cup
and handed it to the others. We dreamt of flying,
built stealth wings, feet hovered above ground
before we thudded to earth, knees so accustomed
to bending. The sky grew into a mouth, when
the opening was masked, we all breathed, sensing
it would go on. The world kept reliving the last years:
a great inhale, then a burden blossoming,
which haunted my own path, footsteps at the brink
of dissolving. I hovered among leaves,
along the horizon, until I met myself halfway.
At the edge of the river, I summon the future,
hold fast to the wind. I’m disappearing steadily.
Copyright © 2026 by Tina Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 17, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“‘Bearing Down’ is a collaboration with artist Hồng-Ân Trương, who is one of the six Asian American women artists whose work is included in my forthcoming collection, LION. The artist’s photographic series draws on stills extracted from archival footage captured by American and Australian soldiers during the American War in Việt Nam in the [sixties and seventies]. ‘Bearing Down’ is part of an extended myth created in response to the surveillance and survival of Asian and Asian American women.”
—Tina Chang
Tina Chang
