Poem of the Week

Sometimes you have to be still and suffer,

Diana Cao

my teacher says about writing, but I

have an active suffering that calls me

to run after it. Keep up, says the feed

of bad news. It’s dangerous to see others

as an abstraction. I don’t need to hate anyone

as an abstraction because I have my mother—I hate

my mother. She who keeps stealing the car keys

is very real. I see her; I know Terror. What does it mean

that I know just where to find a sugar baby but not

a nice companion for my Terror? What does it say

about me that I’d rather be a sugar baby than a nice

companion for my mother? I don’t actually

know if that’s true. But when I’m in a car chasing

my mother down I-95, wind slicing through the papers

in the back seat, I’m not thinking about writing,

or about suffering, even if that’s what this is.

The Yale Review · "Sometimes you have to be still and suffer" by Diana Cao

How did this poem begin for you?

This poem owes a debt, like many of my poems, to friendship. My friend Jay mentioned that his friend had been struggling with a dissertation when her advisor said that “sometimes you just need to be still and suffer.” This advice struck me as hilariously unhelpful. Also, because I was home caring for my mother—who has advanced dementia, loves to drive, and has never taken no for an answer—I couldn’t help thinking that being still and suffering sounded a lot better than running around and suffering.

Diana Cao is a writer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Relational, is available from Sixth Finch.

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