Poem

Progeny

by Derek Chan •

August 2025, no. 478

Poem

Progeny

by Derek Chan •

August 2025, no. 478

A son doesn’t love what he’s supposed to love,
so what’s left to abandon? I have abandoned you,
failed forest, I say to the jade plant. A cube of milk
defrosts on the counter and daylight floods the room.
On my left the shine of antlers, on my right
the ghost of a brother. There is an animal
I could be, snarling outside in the snow –
it only wants to be touched, let inside and loved
like any vanishing thing. These nights, with my face
in soil, I hear crickets cry for another finger.
You obey so easily. To become balm
like buzzards over filth. To pick clean another form
of family, hold a knife to something wilder
no longer yourself. A fraction of a son
is still someone’s son, dividing into a cruel logic:
you cannot cut out the gash you left in your mother
and throw it to the wind without leaving
a larger one in its place. By now the animal outside
has gone quiet, and flies are bloating
in breastbone. Will only those who devour
be given wings? I tear leaves from the jade plant.

Derek Chan

Derek Chan is a writer and educator from Melbourne, Australia. He is an MFA graduate of Cornell University, where he was a university fellow, an editor of EPOCH journal, and a two-time recipient of the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize. Additionally, he holds a First-Class Honors in Literary Studies and Psychology from Monash University, where he received the Arthur Brown Thesis Prize. He is currently a lecturer at Cornell University, where he teaches creative writing and academic composition.

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, Best of Australian Poems, Australian Book Review, Poetry London, Oxford Poetry, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Forward Prize in the Best Single Written Poem category, and has been recognized for awards and nominations in Adroit Journal, Frontier Poetry, Best New Poets, and Palette Poetry. He has also received fellowships or support from venues such as Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).