Translated from the Chinese by Liang Yujing When I pass through the years, my younger selfno longer awaits me. He has ridden away on a horse,farther and farther, raising a cloud of dust, and finally gone.I have to look for him in a mirror, and see thisslowly aging face that has gradually become strange….
Then, I will be a person who knows ferns—who has tramped the woods for miles to tell youabout glacial egg-shaped boulders mattedwith which kind of fern, and then, forty miles south,that the same kind of fern, the Walking Fern,is still vibrant (though less bosky) on northernslopes, in lime sand, and I will be a hat-wearing,walking-stick-carrying…
While you get high with your therapist, I’m smoking a spliff in a cemetery, readingabout the Birds of Tennessee, wishing we were playing house in New York.The art is beautifuleverywhere, but all descriptions of art are the same.Theory elides the gap between aesthetics and ethics.The greathorned owl lives in the suburbs. I’m dismayedto learn the barred…
Translated from the Arabic by Abdelrahman ElGendy So-and-so brushedmy shoulder as gunshotscracked. So-and-so: I never learnedhis name, so I called himcousin, and that wasenough. So-and-so, who sharedhis last bite as hungerfissured my song. So-and-so, a blurwho saw you safelythrough the square. So-and-so, who frisked mewith a grin, asked,“Is he reallystepping down?” So-and-so who told…
I am ready to have less of loss—a thought that comes to me now that I’m used to having lossall around, shows up as I walk past the freshly cut field near the spotwhere my mother-in-law broke both her ankles, bleeding heartsstubborn on the terrace. Some want the poem to come for themfrom the sky…
people like to say, though younever liked when I said itabout this painting, your portraitof a sad clown—your favorite kind.Hair mussed, her greasepaintfaint but still there, she stares outinto an empty place beyondthe unframed canvas. What can I sayto make her stir? Even as a kid,I knew immediately—it was you, Mom.“Not a self-portrait,” you insisted,though…
“How much are you willing to sacrifice?”the spandex-suited antagonist asksin the movie I have decided to rentalmost without thought, it being Friday, late,my wife’s body sprawled impressivelyacross the couch so that I decide, finally,to sit slouched on the floor beneathmy pile of blankets, but now, in the dark,my nose close to the screen, the villainspeaking…
Near Chinatown, at the intersection waiting for the light, an older Chinese woman blurts out, “Nice dress. 4 or 6?” “Oh, I used to be a 6,” she says when I confirm her guess, “now I’m an 8 or 10.” Chagrin lingers in the air, and I want so badly a rescue from the body,…
I’ve stood in the shape of myself, became well-meaning, started letters with dear. I taught paper to fly, heard animals hide themselves in me, like sex inside houses, like centuries inside histories. A bearded man, who pretended to be a philosopher, a fatalist even, came to me, set a circle before me and said nothing that…
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