Time difference by Jennifer Wong

The Poetry Archive Now! WordView 2024 Entry

Poet’s Biography
Author of Letters Home (Nine Arches Press) and a new pamphlet, time difference forthcoming from Verve in 2024. Co-editor of anthologies and author of Identity, Home and Writing Elsewhere (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Poem Description / Inspiration
I was thinking of the way we long to be understood despite where we are and how we are like, and when we don’t have that understanding it feels like some unbridgeable time difference across distances. It is also a letter to my mother in a way, this hope to be accepted, while drawing on memories of the pandemic when she stopped talking to me.

Poem Text
It’s been so long, so long
Now where do we even start?
When I came to visit last time where did we go for dimsum?
I have been missing you all and Crystal Jade Xiaolongbao.
Charlotte’s mandarin. She is drawing characters 日，月，人，窗戶。This week I am teaching new the pronouns and hobbies in Chinese.
Mum, the virus continues to mutate, and England is still very cold, very locked up in itself in this winter of Brexit.
And yes I am still a poet. When I fill in application forms I never mention anything like that.
When other parents ask, I just mumble.
Time differentiates us. When we are having coffee and pastries, you are already slurping your wonton noodles.
Sometimes after dinner I wanted to call you, but you are already fast asleep.
This morning I am baking and the whole house smelled of sourdough. I know you’d love that.
Mum, some day it’d be great to talk to you about Liz Berry and Victoria Chang.
If you’d read my poems, you will find yourself in many of them. Mirrors where I look for you and follow you.
And you might even ask why, after what seems like a lifetime.