Poems by JINJIN XU
Image by Xu YuanYan
Table of Contents
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JinJin Xu is a writer and filmmaker from Shanghai. She is the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Prize, and her debut chapbook There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife is forthcoming in November from Radix Media.
PETER FILKINS
All night long / it bucked and surged / past the window // and my breath / fogging the glass, / a yellow moon // headlamping / through mist, / the tunnel of sleep, // towns racing past. // Down at the crossroads, / warning in the bell, / beams lowering // on traffic before / the whomp of air / followed by the zing // and clack-ety-clack / of hammered rails
JEN JABAILY-BLACKBURN
What do I know / about us? One of us / was called Velvel, / little wolf. One of us / raised horses. Someone / was in grain. Six sisters / threw potatoes across / a river in Pennsylvania. / Once at a fair, I met / a horse performing / simple equations / with large dice. / Sure, it was a trick, / but being charmed / costs so little.
G. C. WALDREP
I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the natural, a complicity epic. / The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear— / Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage, / a friction of consequence.
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