{"id":10876,"date":"2021-07-24T05:26:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T00:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/isabella-wang\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T16:18:31","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T11:18:31","slug":"isabella-wang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/isabella-wang\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cOCCUPATIONAL HAZARD\u201d by Isabella Wang, from Arc&#8217;s 2021 Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cOCCUPATIONAL HAZARD\u201d by Isabella Wang by Arc Poster\" width=\"580\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1094641177&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=870&#038;maxwidth=580\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know the love and anguish of every man<br>by the name of my father<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>who drove himself to sleep every Sunday<br>morning with alcohol, then drove himself<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to the edge of the Yangtze River<br>only to teach me to swim. No, Ba Ba,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know you. I know you never liked<br>the taste of alcohol, but to put a roof<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>over the idea of your future daughter<br>you chose an occupation that required you to drink<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and drink as an elective. The night <br>pouring out of those bottles with cork tops<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>became the fog of morning in your head. <br>The stars contained in fizzling<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>champagne were stars punctuated your breath,<br>punctuated every broken syllable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>you tried to conceal family in the ER. <br>Ba Ba, what else have you<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>given up for me? <em>\/ How many days does he \/ <br><\/em><em> have to go on entertaining clients?<\/em> Mother would say. <em>\/<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The life of a business man is an occupational hazard<br>that dissolves the Ba Ba I had<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in all my previous photographs of you<br>into postcards with foreign stamps<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>from Thailand, Amsterdam, places<br>where the stores with postcards<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>closed so you mailed me their airport brochures.<br>Mother couldn\u2019t understand why I stole the socks<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>from your undergarments drawer<br>and slept with your dirty laundry,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>mistook my missing you for her daughter growing up<br>and wanting to have inappropriate relations with men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But you were the only man<br>I\u2019ve ever loved as a daughter\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once, I begged you to take me with you<br>on a business trip to Qufu,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>woke up to the sight of you <br>intoxicated on a hotel room floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em> \/ Quickly,<\/em> you say.<br><em> Ba Ba slipped and cracked <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>his shin \/ over the toilet bowl rim. It hurts so bad.<br><\/em><em> Quickly daughter \/ call the concierge. \/<\/em> I picked up<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the telephone and asked for four bandaids please, <br>the way a five-year old can stare upon the deepest gorge<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of the human body and not be scared <br>for once, because she recognizes the bone<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>as her Ba Ba\u2019s sacrifice, glistening under light and blood<br>as if to say<em>, \/ one day, daughter, <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em> I\u2019ll have saved to buy you a future <br><\/em><em> that is shiny. \/<\/em> And the four bandaids<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>she has to offer in return for her father\u2019s love <br>will be both enough and not enough, eternally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How could I ever repay you? How could I<br>spare your heart of breaking? The heart<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>of a business man sells investments for a living,<br>and the heart of a writer invests through living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I could not tell the world of your love<br>otherwise\u2014don\u2019t be disappointed with me anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I miss you, Ba Ba, and your voice<br>on the receiving line is nowhere to be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Margo LaPierre<\/strong> on \u201cOCCUPATIONAL HAZARD\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wang\u2019s formally rhythmic and entrancing \u201cOccupational Hazard\u201d remembers the love of a distant father who chose work over closeness with family. This narrative poem undulates through memory, shifting halfway as it catches on a startling scene: the glinting bone of her intoxicated father\u2019s leg, shiny as the future he wants for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Isabella Wang<\/strong> is the author of two poetry collections, <em>On Forgetting a Language<\/em> (Baseline Press, 2019) and <em>Pebble Swing<\/em> (Nightwood Editions, forthcoming 2021). Her poetry and prose have appeared in over thirty literary journals, including <em>Prairie Fire, Prism,<\/em> and <em>The New Quarterly.<\/em> She is the Editor for issue 44.2 of <em>Room<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\">\u201cOCCUPATIONAL HAZARD\u201d by Isabella Wang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10568,10832,10614,10725","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3148,3265,3266],"topic":[3178],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10876"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}