Celebrating 15 Years
By JINJIN XU
These poems are excerpted from the published work of JinJin Xu ’17, a guest at Amherst College’s LitFest 2025. Register for this exciting, 10th-anniversary celebration of Amherst’s literary legacy and life.
Table of Contents
- “There They Are”
- “To Your Brother, Who Is Without Name”
- “The Revolution is Not a Dinner Party”
- “Against This Earth, We Knock”
There They Are
my mother, my father.
Her skinny blue wrists, his ear caressing a cigarette. In the beginning,
it is already too late, but there is hunger & no time
to waste. All they need are six hands, three mouths, a clockwork
yearning for locks of their own, windows square & fresh. In the beginning,
my cry breaks my father, who flushes red at my fall, opens my face in search
of his mother. Grasses, grasses on a country
road, hawthorn up to their waists,
aflame. The crying of no mothers. Temple bells hung
by the wind. An October without moons,
a feeling I’ve been here before. Dew on the page.
Windows billowing wax paper.
Fall’s charred eyelids. Toes pressing down my own wet
imprint. Begin the world without a bang.
Water, air, the Earth split into an egg,
elements halved for light. No mothers, just two figures on a bicycle
for one. A sweaty country road. Stoves that won’t start,
boxes of damp matchsticks. Strain of a blue wrist
untucking cigarettes from his lips
prayer of hands inside the ashes of mothers,
single finger curving to a hush. Careful,
hold the glass up to one eye, split the nucleus
with the other, explosions muted by winged lungs.
Put down my pen. Unfold my eyes. Count backwards
before legs, before longing, until I hit a snag in the web,
open, to find my palm full of tears.
Once, there were no mothers. Trace the outline,
one, two, build a family from hunger. Listen, a cry, mine,
dragging her mother’s last breath up the jagged washboard as he soaps
my throat clean, baptizing his mother’s blackened lungs.
My mouth opens to wake their beginning & just like that
blesses our downfall.
There, stretch the canvas, spread oil thin-thin
into our crevasses, what’s that in the distance? No mother,
not the moon, just six hands bent over a clock face with no opening,
porcelain spoons raised to another’s lips, tap – tap we widen
our insides until ink forks our edges. In the beginning,
an October without night. Windows torn
open with flashlights. Hawthorn dawning a mother’s last breath.
Let me begin again,
To Your Brother, Who Is Without Name
It is snowing. I wake to find your brother
out the window, meditating. Apricot t-shirt
dusted with white, eyes closed in the blue light.
In my sleep, I had forgotten –
memory alone, slips –
April, remember that film we watched?
Jie mei sisters sworn to this life,
pair of jade bangles separated,
slid up the other’s wrist.
Remember how we shielded our faces
with a too-small pillow
as the sister on screen sharpens
her knife. She sharpens her knife
To save her sister, which is to say
to betray herself. Between us,
there was once betrayal.
But April, you already know this,
I have lost your brother to a Name –
Those last weeks, April, I lost
him to a land without sleep,
days without rest, his dreams wrestling
the pale daybreak. In the land of eternal wake,
I call – I call –
His Name sinews into threads,
ashes, ashes, our birth country allows
no return for the dead. Except, there,
He is still alive,
Called into the living by relatives
who still think him growing,
still call him by Name.
In the Kingdom of Eternal Spring,
Peach blossoms. Whiskered gods
swooping down the backs of cranes,
I hear his whisper in the clouds,
pressing his ear to a murmur
of Names –
It was snowing, April, the day I left
your brother waiting. I am afraid of this memory.
Left alone, it slips. Every word I say
becomes truth. Please take my words
as they are, pinpricks of light –
From the surface of your face, April,
emerges his outline. I look away, desperate
for you to believe me, to know my story
as true. Instead, I crouch to shift
Him from my back. I let him down.
That sweltering food stamp summer.
Him swinging containers packed by your parents,
stopping by a man on the sidewalk,
Asking, Do you like chicken?
Containers stacked on the pavement.
Signs everywhere. Dusty apricot shirt,
howls tearing the winds.
April, words are slipping –
I wrap my palm around their throats.
Step back over the threshold. Hold.
A sister without a brother is still a sister,
is always a sister, half-rhyme, reaching –
remember?
Me telling you, beneath the train tracks,
I am writing about us,
I mean, about him. Sirens swallow
your voice. Do not – red pools –
his Name –
He has not slept, your brother,
lotus pose in the snow.
His outline blurs, blue with wanting,
waiting, eyes closed, for me to wake.
It is no longer snowing –
No, I am awake, I am outside,
palms outstretched to greet him.
In this story is a promise. Promise
of a brother without Name,
word that keeps him living –
Magic Word.
Word beyond grief.
Memory’s slippery net.
In this story, my story,
April, it was never snowing –
The Revolution is Not a Dinner Party
“Once Mao Tse-tung’s thought is grasped by the broad masses,
it becomes a source of strength and a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power.”
– Lin Biao’s foreword to “Quotations from Chairman Mao”
The people have nothing.
Let a hundred flowers
Bloom.
Thousands upon thousands
Of martyrs usher
the threshold.
Crimson fantasy,
a dog
-Matic attitude.
Lift up their heads.
The Chinese
lift up a hundred
Barrels of guns.
The flowers
Shut their eyes.
The people, alone,
Bind war
in thick ropes.
Ghosts,
a now common
Language. Not
living. Paper.
Dead. A storm
so swift
And corrupt,
the melody
Goes on
shooting.
Against This Earth, We Knock
Prayer hands to forehead, slide down brow, throat, chest.
You are a pilgrim, a metaphor, more than belonging, a bucket by the well.
Departure dips your border into another.
Slice the middle of you, the bell hollows.
Spread open those hands.
Crawl forward.
Crawl through the known world, the scriptures are watering.
Pilgrim as pitiless blue, without motion, only motion.
Prostrate body towards heaven.
One hundred thousand kowtows towards the holy.
Head cites this earth.
Again, this earth, this earth.
Rise joint by joint. Spine, fingertip, toe. Empty the rungs of your lungs.
From those who die along the way, pluck a singular tooth.
Tuck its owner inside your breast.
Place one foot before the other, what’s below will hold.
Sift past lives through a sieve, careful where the wind carries.
Tumble of organs, whose house of grief?
Reach past the veil. The spirits cannot hear you.
Open palms, carve dirt from your nails, unspeakable sour.
Hour of the rooster, what belongs there.
Break water from fruit, unravel silk from worms, mouths worn with desire.
Forehead knocking this earth.
This earth refuses. A formality of the maker.
Air thins in the plains. Place the native red flower on your tongue.
No longer are you walking.
Prostrate body. Lungs kiss what is below. You wait.
A small life flattens between your palms.
You bleed, two red brides.
Incense stains the morning purple.
Fistful of lemons.
You have carried the dead, their tooth.
The air thins to song.
You are waiting to arrive.
At the gate, you hammer.
Into wood flesh, you hammer the teeth of pilgrims.
Unwrap sheets from your body.
This earth, knocking.
JinJin Xu ’17 is a poet and artist based in Shanghai and New York. She is the winner of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Prize and was named by Forbes Chinaas one of the Top 100 Most Influential Chinese in 2023. Her work has appeared in The Common, Narrative, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, and has been recognized by prizes from Southern Humanities Review, Tupelo Press, and the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. She received her MFA in poetry from NYU, where she was a Lillian Vernon Fellow. Her debut poetry chapbook, There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife, won the inaugural Own Voices Chapbook Prize. Most recently, her solo exhibition of multi-disciplinary works debuted at the How Art Museum, Shanghai. She is currently the Moving Image Diversity Fellow at Bard College.
