Night Swim

This poem originally appeared in The New England Review

Stranger, the bats fly low tonight,
the moon’s cloaked in cloud. Three strokes
and I’ve lost you, too. In a cold ripple,
I’m water-logged, unwound—

I want a shadow of a shadow,
a homeless floater. Give me a word
that lights the lake and makes you
less strange. My silence palm-slaps

the surface, my body fishes
for yours. I’ll swim to you all night
and not find you. Or I’ll find you
and never stop swimming.

Jennifer Chang's first book of poems, The History of Anonymity, is forthcoming in Spring 2008 from University of Georgia Press