Chanson Douce

Sandra Lim

I hold a creamy little baby
to my chest. She assents to my embrace. I inquire
about my species: she has a look
of true, plain being.
She is need itself. Sucking. Crying.
Otherwise, her expression is basically
serious, and the devotion she summons, famously
brutal. Her mother would die for her,
the old, old story.Part of me watches the rest of me being
anxious, superior, and invaded
by longing. These rank weeds spring up
beside a curious sense
of sequel. I remember it sharply now: a little
time ago, wishing I had something
new, and the strain of it
nearly killing me. There was
no deeper meaning.

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Sandra Lim is the author of The Wilderness, selected by Louise Glück for the 2013 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Loveliest Grotesque. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

jubilat

Issue 33 – 2018

Amherst, Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Executive Editor
Dara Wier

Editors
Caryl Pagel, Emily Pettit

Managing Editor
Halie Theoharides

From the first issue onward, jubilat has aimed to publish not only the best in contemporary American poetry, but to place it alongside a varied selection of reprints, found pieces, lyric prose, art, and interviews with poets and other artists. Rather than section off these varieties of work, the magazine creates a dialogue that showcases the beauty and strangeness of the ordinary, and how experiments with language and image speak in a compelling way about who we are.

Response to jubilat has been overwhelming. Work from recent issues has been selected for inclusion in Best American Poetry ; The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses and; and five times for reprint in Harper’s magazine. The magazine has also been featured in Poets & Writers, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and was shown in the New York Public Library’s 2002 exhibit New American Literary Magazines.

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