Poem by ZHANG QIAOHUI
Translated from the Chinese by YILIN WANG
Poem appears below in both English and Chinese.
Soliloquy
You know where Grandma is buried, but do not know
where Grandma’s Grandma is
New poems from our contributors AKWE AMOSU, JUDITH BAUMEL, and ELIZABETH METZGER
Table of Contents:
Akwe Amosu | New citizen
Judith Baumel | Irij
Elizabeth Metzger | Talking to Jean about Love
| Talking to Jean about Love II
Everybody wants to let go, but how do you let go if you
don’t hold things?
—Daniel Odier, Tantric Quest
Red draws their tiny eye, and every hummingbird
feeder you can buy blooms a plastic, stoic
ruby, effigy of flower, tadasana of red. Already
they have eaten me out of sugar, but forgetful today
You’re trying to reattach your car’s side mirror
but your ungloved fingers can’t remove
the protective strip from the two-sided tape,
and the mid-morning sun angles into your eyes
as you try to align and fasten the plastic clips.
You’re floundering in flashes of light and dark,
so after a few minutes you scoot inside
because January’s cold, and ask your wife for help,
Before I was north and south of a new country
I was divided from I was a tactic I was
a slave-trading port
| It has become the first ritual of morning to throw the door open, welcoming the breeze now free of evening’s biting insects, another in a long line of self-justifications: it will arrive whether it’s welcome or not. As will the birds, who know when you breakfast and on what, who are generous with suggestions, whether here, in your dishabille, or at the seasonal cafe, in not much else. There is a three-sided varnished pine box with a plexiglass front, like a bird feeder or diorama or, in traditions less eager to let go or get rid, a coffin, scale being trivial to all species but those least likely to accept it, though the slot on top and slips of paper on display suggest a raffle or ballot, a variation on a theme performed in a tiny theater, and the blanks and golf pencil at the side are, in combination and without need to announce itself with embossed lettering or miniature reply envelope—scale, again—an invitation. At this suggestion, you suggest: The history of our times betrays the stupid arrogance of this and so many other definite articles, symptomatic of these times and others. It might be noticed and echoed and yet go unchallenged on social media, but here it could ignite a sudden change, a contemplative pleasure, and be forgotten all in the span of a few moments, like rain in the green season. It means something to us, this refusal to admit our visceral understanding of the unity of space and time, when, honestly, we know them in no other way. Whereas your ruminations on what memory means to the birds have proven inconclusive. Like you, they’re as routinized in their offices as offices. Like you, they celebrate the light that breaks the rain, throughout the day and without memory, as the arrival of a god. |
By DIANE THIEL
(after a line by Edith Södergran)
On foot, I had to cross the galaxy.
I left without luggage or gear, knowing
nothing I had would be of use out there.
That’s what that russet brushstroke is
below the skyline—her spots
lost in the open plains. That’s hunger
that blurs her. We cannot see
what she is chasing, but we can
imagine it. Zebra. Gazelle. Impala.
Antelope. The eyes of the animal
large in its sockets. I like that lone
acacia tree back there—it has this
bonsai spirit to it. This calm.
And the trio of almost imperceivable
stars in the upper corner, those light
pink grains, which remind me we are
also traveling quick around the sun—
957 times faster than this cheetah,
not to mention the speed of the sun
inside the Milky Way, and the Milky Way
through cold, dark, soundless space—
1.3 million mph, last time I checked.
Astronomers and physicists did
the math for us, but little did they know
what it would do to human minds
or hearts—mine is going
pretty fast now, just thinking about
our velocity, our spiraling out.
Here, place your palm against it.
Over my sticker that says Visitor.
By JOHN POCH
The youngest deconstructionists among us
are proud at first to spend their days breaking up
great slabs of fired tile every shade of wine
while the masters climb the scaffolds
with their gold pride, their gilt, reaching for
a sandal buckle or the heights of a halo.
Despite barriers of rat screen, parge, and tar,
despite blustering wind in the chimney,
I think I hear something setting up house
in the cellar. It’s a night to come in
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