By FRANCISCO MÁRQUEZ
Winner of the 2020 DISQUIET Prize for Poetry
Fixed at sunset, a wooden blue shack
as if with it a million scenes of shipwrecks,
not black rock or islands of fog rising individual
in a barrenness of salt. It is not that
By ADRIENNE SU
When the exhibit went up at Peachtree Center,
the Chinese of Atlanta flocked downtown.
Jews had been in Henan so close to forever,
they weren’t seen as foreign. And we had found
an exhibit on China that wasn’t old vases.
Jews were Chinese in more ways than food.
Migration was not always out of the places
our families had fled; it had once been to.
Our pantries were “ethnic” not just for the shrimp chips
and wood ears, but as well for the matzah.
Maybe, when asked, Do you celebrate Christmas?,
we were not being checked for Zen or the Buddha.
We didn’t say it in so many words.
The line between Asia and Europe had blurred.
Honolulu
I walk to the park
drummers sit in a circle under a white tent
they have drifted this far way on pacific waves
long feathers tucked behind their ears
they sweat in soft fringed hides
their faces lean and dark
By RUI CARDOSO MARTINS
Translated by DEAN THOMAS ELLIS
There are two twin girls in the courtroom. They look very much alike, with fine blonde hair, tightly bound, and short, pretty noses. One can see they have not yet reached the point in life where twins become separate. If they were to trade places, it would not be easy to tell the difference. But do not look at them in this way. A year and a half ago, a curtain fell between them.
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