Dorothy Chan

cantfindit

Dorothy Chan (she/they) is an American poet, educator, and editor born to Chinese immigrants in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Growing up as often the only Asian girl in her classes attracted Chan to traveling the country during her time in higher education, earning an English BA from Cornell University in New York, a poetry MFA from Arizona State University, and a poetry PhD from Florida State University. After college, Chan joined Hobart magazine as its poetry editor, and they are now the co-founder and head editor of Honey Literary, a journal focused on BIPOC writers. She is the author of four collections of poetry inspired by her experiences as an Asian American woman and enjoys exploring themes of sex, fetishization, and food and its relationship to cultural identity. In 2019, Chan became an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, where she currently resides. They love excess in art and, specifically, when poetry tells a story and has at least five words in the title.

 

Photo Credit: Bill Hoepner

Somehow

You visit me in a dream after passing, 

         after I’ve been awaiting you for weeks, 

because Chinese belief teaches us our 

         loved ones will appear when we’re asleep. 

It’s real when I enter the hotel restaurant 

         in the middle of nowhere town I live in, 

as the Midwest architecture transforms 

         into Kowloon at evening time. We eat 

bird’s nest soup, and I remember the time 

         my father ordered me this four-hundred- 

year-old delicacy at Hong Kong airport. 

         Out comes the Peking duck, and I ask you: 

“Why did it take you so long?” You answer: 

         “I arrived once you were strong and ready.”

Published:

2024

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Death & Loss

Food

Intersectionality & Culture

Poetic Form

Literary Devices:

Dialogue

conversation between two or more people as a feature of a book, play, or movie

Elegy

a meditation on death, often in thoughtful mourning lamentation

Iambic Pentameter

a line of verse composed of five iambs– an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (u / u / u / u / u /) commonly used in the Renaissance period

Sonnet

A poem with fourteen lines that traditionally uses a fixed rhyme scheme and meter.