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Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. After she earned her B.A. in English from Michigan State University, she went on to study poetry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she earned her MFA.
Marianne is the author of All Heathens, which was the winner of the 2021 GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry and the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, West Branch, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Between 2017-2019, she served as poetry editor for Split Lip Magazine.
She lives in Cincinnati with her partner, Clancy, and her cat, Bella. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English & Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.
Something Borrowed
The names of orbits, the names
of Uncles, the names of plants
all memorized or gathered or buried
with the seeds. I have never grown
weary of reading the labels of spices,
ingredients of a potion, desert trees.
Never grown tired of counting
the seconds between lightning
and its boom, the gongs of the big clock
as it adds the hours that have
passed since midnight, when the college
is still asleep, and the students are
forgetting the answers to their teacher’s
great questions. As we forget
the names of the orbits, planets. The day
they married. The day he died.
That day was Monday, August,
and it was hot outside.
In Defense of Karaoke
But the microphone was always a cradle / Elvis and Patsy Cline /Sinatra Nat King Cole / Sharon Cuneta / Lea Salonga
my god / your grandfather's throat was the moon / and whenat the meat market / the man shaves a pig's face
and croons / I just want your extra time / and your / Kiss / alongwith the television behind him / the body reverberates / the body
echoes aches / the lungs are your mother's kitchen / where shesings Usahay / oh sigh / lyrics unspool past your school / past
the vast pool of motorbikes / Jeepneys / past the oranges pastthe barefootedness / into your husband into your son / into
America / atop Lake Michigan / around which you drivein your car and trees / scroll past fast akin to the lyrics of your
song / because you always / sing I'm so excited and I just / can'thide it / because you always are / and you always can't
you always will / will yourself to life when you have no choice / or voice / unravel into the microphone and listen / to yourself
double / miss your mother father brother / kiss their photographs / kiss America / learn to love it / until you learn the lyrics by heart.
But the microphone was always a cradle / Elvis and Patsy Cline /Sinatra Nat King Cole / Sharon Cuneta / Lea Salonga
my god / your grandfather's throat was the moon / and whenat the meat market / the man shaves a pig's face
and croons / I just want your extra time / and your / Kiss / alongwith the television behind him / the body reverberates / the body
echoes aches / the lungs are your mother's kitchen / where shesings Usahay / oh sigh / lyrics unspool past your school / past
the vast pool of motorbikes / Jeepneys / past the oranges pastthe barefootedness / into your husband into your son / into
America / atop Lake Michigan / around which you drivein your car and trees / scroll past fast akin to the lyrics of your
song / because you always / sing I'm so excited and I just / can'thide it / because you always are / and you always can't
you always will / will yourself to life when you have no choice / or voice / unravel into the microphone and listen / to yourself
double / miss your mother father brother / kiss their photographs / kiss America / learn to love it / until you learn the lyrics by heart.
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