- POEMS

- WIND CROSSING GRASSES: POEMS FROM CHINA’S DRAGON RIVERS

- NOT TOO HARD TO MASTER

POEMS

- Editor’s Note, July/August 2025

- Beach

- Diary

- Hereafter

- The Call

- How to Love Your Mother at 98

- Throwing Them Away

- 탈춤

- Dance of Masks

- 성락

- Music for Voice

- On Translating Kim Ok

- They/Them

- Dear Time,

- Plaster [“A shallow depth of field produces flames”]

- Plaster [“We paint all these rooms white”]

- Plaster [“How a barn owl is never just a single barn owl”]

- Plaster [“At another work site In a sister borough”]

- Plaster [“In this song a drum takes itself apart]

- The Muse of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

- Grave-Digging

- The Weeds (Accidentally on Purpose)

- Heaven

- Evel Knievel Returns to Snake River Canyon

- Operation 2020

- Language Studies: ‘Ahooyawpe’ / From the Air

- Підземний пляж

- The Underground Beach

- Бомбосховище

- The Bomb Shelter

- On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

- The

- Silicon Valley, in the Backseat of a Tesla

- Night Class

- broken lyre

- i am the machine and i work

- Thinking of It

- Small Talk

- Shiftless

- Brunch Shift

- Age at the Beginning of Knowing

- Upon Receiving the Gift of a Handmade Box

ADRIAN MATEJKA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

Editor’s Note, July/August 2025

On the perennial return to narrative.

BY Adrian Matejka

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

Summer in Chicago is the season of porch and backyard kickbacks, lingering with family and friends alongside the joyous interruptions of neighborhood dogs and children big-wheeling in the driveway. It’s the time when storytelling uncles settle in with a beverage of their choosing to spin almost-true yarns that distract from the real troubles around us. I imagine the oldest known poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, was a similar backyard distraction four thousand years ago. The poem follows Gilgamesh as he navigates natural disasters and mythical creatures on a quest for immortality. Gilgamesh himself is the front-porch uncle of future heroes like Odysseus, Coleridge’s ancient mariner, and Walcott’s Shabine.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a narrative poem in the truest and most fantastic sense. It illustrates why humans rely on anecdotes, real or imagined, to hold on to our oldest histories in times of need. When I first encountered poetry in the nineties, narrative was the mode of most poets writing in the United States. Marilyn Chin, Rita Dove, Martin Espada, Robert Hass, Marilyn Nelson, and Ruth Stone, in concert with others, perfected the balance of plot, image, and rhythm necessary to push a poem out into the mythological waves.

I try to avoid sweeping statements about style in these editor’s notes, but in the later part of the twentieth century nearly all the winners of major prizes were poetic storytellers. Some, like Ai and Frank Bidart, leaned into dramatic monologue as a home for the narrative. Others, like William Matthews (whose “Mingus at the Showplace” remains in my poem pantheon) and Yusef Komunyakaa (whose “Slam, Dunk, & Hook” is still the best basketball poem I’ve read) hit their storytelling obligations directly: scene, character, and dialogue—Freytag’s Pyramid in lines that swing tough enough to make Ellington envious.

I am reminded of this perennial return to narrative now because the July/August issue of Poetry includes several anecdotal poems. We’re fortunate to share two unpublished poems from the great Stanley Plumly, whose posthumous Collected Poems is forthcoming in August. Ellen June Wright’s graceful poems detail the complexity of caring for an elderly mother. Though not explicitly narrative, the poems in this issue’s folio—“Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers,” curated and translated by Wang Ping—coalesce into a communal story of China’s Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. The poems throughout this issue highlight that, regardless of whether you sit on the porch or in the boat of your own odyssey, there’s a story asking to be told about it in tercets, trumpets, or the dusking light of a July evening.

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany, and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana. Matejka served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018–19, and he became the editor of Poetry magazine in 2022.

Matejka is the author of several collections of poetry, including: Somebody Else Sold the World (Penguin, 2021), a finalist for the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize; Map to the Stars (Penguin, 2017); The Big...

Read Full Biography

Next In Issue

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1690311/editors-note-july-august-2025 at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

STANLEY PLUMLY | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Beach

By Stanley Plumly

The end, I think, will be a little like looking down as far as I can see to where the wind has kicked up the tide and turned it all the same—sea, spume, the air. There might even be someone walking toward me, the way in the edge-of-the-ocean blue light they’ll be obscure until the last moment. I think it’ll be late afternoon, the sky that luminous oyster white into which things disappear. I’ll stop to look at the sky, and the moment I do I realize I’m alone, I misunderstood the figure coming toward me, which, considering the time of day, is as it should be, especially now that the wind has kicked up a little and the white sun has almost dropped under the soft gray almost stillness of the water, it seems just the right hour to be, again, alive.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690379/beach at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

STANLEY PLUMLY | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Diary

By Stanley Plumly

The euphemism is “infusion” when confusion is what happens, and depends on no time in particular especially the middle of the night, last night, on the way to the bathroom, the nightlight the snaky color of the pool I learned to swim in at the Y, with just about the same skill of trying to fly over the water and falling into my body to no depth really but enough to be told to take another turn: so in the hallway, half-awake, I’m side to side and looking down to see how alone I am with the sentimental figure of my bladder ... As just an hour ago, the therapy itself just hours ago (Velcade, Cytoxan, Dexamethasone, needle nothing but a pinprick to the bone), I’m back home and feeling one step at a time when I step off blinded into air from the not-so-dizzy height of the front porch and fall through my eighty-year-old body like a boy again, sink or swim, too much or too little water in the system: hitting the granite walkway first, then rolling helter-skelter down the front hill’s fresh-cut grass. The cure for cancer is to fall, let go, find a landing you can live with, regardless of the time of day or where the light’s soft center is. It isn’t darkest night or brilliant sun off the bright water blinding, only you and the civil ground that is the difference between this/that awkward moment and serious. Pride goeth before a fall, a paraphrase of Proverbs 16:18, whose actual language is the most extreme destruction, caused by a haughty spirit. It was, if I reconstruct it right, my aging humble body dropping down a well to the lawn’s shadow bottom, suddenly worn, but getting up to brush itself and think itself still lucky. My spirit, turning over for that moment lost inside me, falling too, also thinking if thinking is what spirits do.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690315/diary at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

KEVIN YOUNG | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Hereafter

By Kevin Young

Once, in winter, I was blessed

by lightning, the plane

sudden struck—the boom

of it, the cabin lit up

& then the air

made metal

in my mouth. It’s true,

you can look it up—

we had circled like hell,

_____

trying to land

a good while—

once even descended

through clouds of snow,

earthbound, only

to rise again

the last moment

when a plane already

sat there, blinking,

_____

on our white runway.

Exiled back

to the sky, we orbited

the airport untethered

& impatient.

So when lightning threaded

us through, we all knew—

wrong it turns out,

yet one day

_____

true enough, perhaps soon—

we’d be done.

You should know

that after you ready

to meet the far,

stony shore, it is not hope

but the strange fire

of forgiveness

that flares & fights

_____

there—not wanting

to go, hoping only

you’d said so

long to all you know—

to the elms

who also know what it means

to be told you’d die

& survive.

In that emptied, electric air

_____

some wept. Others asked

to help, or for help,

began to act

as if it was merely static

that snagged

us aloft. How long

did we linger

up there, in thunder?

Thinking mostly of all

_____

I loved, of what

I’d never write.

Mirror

of my mind. Once we kissed

the earth again, firetrucks

ushered us

through the open gates

where the five o’clock news

asked what I’d seen

_____

& the woman I loved, picking me up,

talked a blue streak till she heard

the between we’d been.

Quiet then, we fetched

my luggage orbiting

the conveyor belt, unspooling

its rosary. We drove

home in snow deep

as silence. This little

_____

living light. Even now

how to name

just how bright the sky

looked that night & most

the next day?

Hard to believe

one instant

you could be beyond

the earth’s reach—

_____

the next, marveling

at our singed,

wounded wings.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690317/hereafter at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

ELLEN JUNE WRIGHT | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Call

By Ellen June Wright

The caregiver calls to tell me about mother,

but I know she hasn’t slept. The security videos

of her restless night populate my email’s inbox.

She turned and turned throughout the dark hours.

I’m 1,600 miles away and helpless. In need of divine

power, I decide to sing for an audience of one.

As I begin, I hear mother trying to follow,

trying to pull at some tangled string of memory

to release what once was. Music has charms

to soothe a savage breast, and maybe a failing mind.

When I finish the second hymn, I ask,

What’s your favorite? She says, the first thing to go

was my memory. Is it possible to forget a lifetime

of songs sung weekly? Some forget the name of their

spouse, their children, where they live;

so why not forget a beloved song? After, we think

of our blessings, say them aloud. We still have much

to be thankful for. Just when I think her mind is settled

for now, or worn out by agitation, she’s ready for more.

I let her talk as we enter the second hour, until

her words run out, until she’s more the self I knew.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690321/the-call at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

ELLEN JUNE WRIGHT | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

How to Love Your Mother at 98

By Ellen June Wright

When you wake from a troubled sleep,

after you’ve used the bathroom, don’t go back.

Walk down the hall and push her hollow-core

door open. She’ll be there, smaller than the last time

you visited her, sitting on the side of the bed

having just used her commode. Before

she can ask, walk to it and lift the cover,

then the seat. Pull out the bucket that holds

her still warm urine, take it to her bathroom,

empty it in the toilet. Wipe it out. Rinse it. Dry it.

Spray it with lavender-scented Lysol. Return it

to the O-ring. Cover it. Lower the seat and lid.

Accept what love is now the wars have ended.

Say, do you need anything else?

She’ll say, I could’ve done it myself, and it’s true

but she’s fallen so many times from her glaucoma

or vertigo or both. Unwilling to wait, she’s tipped

the bucket—urine all over the tile and the rug—

half a day’s cleaning for her aide after lifting her

from the floor.

Just smile and ask, do you want help with the bed?

And together begin to stretch the rumpled sheets

in place, then the coverlet and the coral crocheted

afghan you made that rests near the edge.

Replace the pillows. Then help her bent body inch

toward the wheelchair. It’s time for her shower.

Today, you’ll do this together like two women in a

French painting. Her dentures she’ll clean on her own.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690319/how-to-love-your-mother-at-98 at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

J. ALLYN ROSSER | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Throwing Them Away

By J. Allyn Rosser

smiling at far end of table with friends I don’t know

newly wedded NYC looking down

taking turns holding me in my first overexposed summer

tiny together before that house the contractor reneged on

harvesting honey in outlandishly concealing outfits

riding burros down into the Grand Canyon tiny in hats

the driveway under six feet of snow

flowers out front flowers out back flowers someone sent

Thanksgiving meals without faces

her minuscule onstage in Once Upon a Mattress

her minuscule onstage lecturing on mind control

duplicate shots of his paintings we still have

duplicate shots of his paintings we don’t have

maybe him shooting hoops

his parents squinting arms folded

almond trees in bloom

both standing diminutively before Kyoto temple 2009

her forearms presenting someone’s cake

deer out back rabbit on steps bat between bricks

her in the wrong skirt

sepia 1941 1932 1928 who are these people

four of a flock of ducks

several of their also dead friends

nine of his motorcycle all angles

fifty-four of quilt shows no humans

his hands only gripping large perch

unflattering in bad light

unflattering in good light

her mother from the back in her kitchen

class reunion class reunion class reunion

me with them in 1973

looking distinctly ungrateful

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690323/throwing-them-away at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

KIM OK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

탈춤

By Kim Ok

여러분, 서러움과 즐거움을 맛보려거든,

‘도덕’ 의예복과 ‘법률’ 의 갓을 묘하게 쓰고

다 이곳으로 들어오십시오, 이곳은

인생의 ‘이기’ 탈춤 회장입니다.

춤을 잘 추어야 합니다, 서툴어 넘어지면

운명이라는 놈의 함정에 들어갑니다,

하면 ‘행복의 명부’에서는 이름을 여의며,

다시는 입장권인 인생권을 얻지 못합니다.

인생은 짧고 춤추는 시간은 깁니다,

한 분만 잃으면, 한 분만큼의 행복의 춤이

없어지게 됩니다, 선은 빨리해야 합니다.

자, 그러면 빨리 춥시다, 좋다 좋다, 얼씨구 ......

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Kim Ok

By Ryan Choi

A quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690327/talcum at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

KIM OK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Dance of Masks

By Kim Ok

Translated By Ryan Choi

Translated from the Korean

Ladies and Gentlemen, please, if you wish to taste

true joy—and

melancholy concurrently, you must

Clothe your body in the sacramental garbs of

MORALITY

and put on the hat of

LAW AND ORDER,

Before even thinking of entering into this hallowed place—

the ballroom dance

of existence we call

SELF-INTEREST.

And remember: if you cannot dance with proper manners

and skill, you will be punished in public forthwith

by the bastards who sit on the committee of

FATE,

And your name will be stricken from the

REGISTRY OF GOODWILL,

and you will

never again receive a ticket for admission to

the ballroom dance of existence.

Life runs short and the dance runs long, the loss of one

man is a loss not for all—

the dance of good times rocks on

and on in the face of

EVERYTHING ...

Yes, we must hurry and dance, as fast now as we can—

yes, together like this,

EXCELLENT.

How adept your steps and mine are as one, until

suddenly

they are not—oh

SHIT.

Notes:

Read the translator’s note by Ryan Choi.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Kim Ok

By Ryan Choi

A quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690325/dance-of-masks at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

KIM OK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

성락

By Kim Ok

울려 나오는 악성의

느리고도 짧은

애닯은 곡조에

나의 사라진 옛 꿈은

그윽하게 살아

내 가슴 아파라.

설움 가득한 악성의

빠르고도 더딘

애닯은 곡조에

뒤숭숭한 그 생각은

고요하게 와서

내 눈물 흘러라.

가슴 울리는 악성의

넓다랗고 좁은

애닯은 곡조에

스러져가는 내 영은

새롭게 눈뜨며

그윽히 웃어라.

스며 흐르는 악성의

높다랗고도 낮은

애닯은 곡조에

푸른 위안의 바람이

한가롭게 불며

거리를 돌아라

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Kim Ok

By Ryan Choi

A quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690329/seongrag at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

KIM OK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Music for Voice

By Kim Ok

Translated By Ryan Choi

Translated from the Korean

I

Sonorous music for voice— I hear

a short but elegiac,

pained

melody— for long discarded

dreams of a simple life

and my heart

in fading aches.

II

Funereal music for voice— I hear

a brisk but elegiac,

pained

melody— for the restless

desire I have for quiet

and the tears

spill down my face.

III

Tragic music for voice— I hear

a long but stilted,

pained

melody— for my shriveling

spirit, and I smile faintly feeling

a touch refreshed.

IV

Water music for voice— I hear

a high but grounded,

pained

melody— for the soothing blue

inescapable breeze, blowing sweetly

through every corner

of town.

Notes:

Read the translator’s note by Ryan Choi.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Kim Ok

By Ryan Choi

A quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690331/music-for-voice at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

RYAN CHOI | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

On Translating Kim Ok

A quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry.

BY Ryan Choi

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

Kim Ok (1896–unknown) stands as a quietly radiant and neglected figure in early modern Korean poetry, bridging the rich lyricism of classical Korean verse with the hard elegance of modernism. Born in North P’yŏngan (present-day North Korea), Kim came of age during a time of seismic cultural shifts—the fall of King Gojong’s Imperial Korea, the onset of Japanese colonial rule, and the tumult of modernity pressing in from the West. Educated in Japan and skilled in English, French, and Japanese, Kim introduced Western poetic aesthetics and methods into Korean poetry through his translations of foreign poets—including Paul Verlaine, Charles Baudelaire, and W. B. Yeats—and his own early verse, marked by experimentation and his wide reading. Over time, however, his style shifted toward a more conservative lyricism, favoring traditional sentiment and moral clarity in line with his pro-Japanese politics. His evolution reflects the complex tensions of writing under colonial—and then nationalist—rule, where art can never be wholly divorced from questions of national identity, and personal and cultural survival or destruction.

Kim’s final years are embroiled in intrigue. At the outset of the Korean War in 1950, he was abducted to Pyongyang, North Korea, where he reportedly served on the Central Committee for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification, until he was forced to relocate to a farm collective in 1958, his last known whereabouts. In South Korea, his name appears most prominently today in the Encyclopedia of Pro-Japanese Collaborators.

The two translations printed here are based on poems from Kim’s seminal 1923 collection, Songs of the Jellyfish. In these translations, I have not aimed for literal fidelity but have instead treated the author’s work as a space for experimentation, with my English versions being visual and typographic compositions as much as translations.

Read the poems this note is about: “Music for Voice” and “Dance of Masks” by Kim OK.

Ryan Choi’s books include Three Demons: A Study on Sanki Saitō’s Haiku (Open Letter, 2024) and In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (Paper + Ink, 2023). He is an editor at AGNI.

Read Full Biography

Previous In Issue Next In Issue

Author

Kim Ok

Kim Ok (1896–unknown) was a poet and translator who helped usher in Korean literary modernism before disappearing in North Korea in 1950.

Poem

탈춤

By Kim Ok

여러분, 서러움과 즐거움을 맛보려거든,

‘도덕’ 의예복과 ‘법률’ 의 갓을 묘하게 쓰고

다 이곳으로 들어오십시오, 이곳은

인생의 ‘이기’ 탈춤 회장입니다.

춤을 잘 추어야 합니다,…

Poem

Dance of Masks

By Kim Ok

Translated By Ryan Choi

Ladies and Gentlemen, please, if you wish to taste

true joy—and

melancholy concurrently, you must

Clothe…

Poem

성락

By Kim Ok

울려 나오는 악성의

느리고도 짧은

애닯은 곡조에

나의 사라진 옛 꿈은

그윽하게 살아

내 가슴 아파라.

설움 가득한 악성의

빠르고도 더딘

애닯은 곡조에

뒤숭숭한 그 생각은

고요하…

Poem

Music for Voice

By Kim Ok

Translated By Ryan Choi

i

Sonorous music for voice— I hear

a short but elegiac,

pained

melody— for long discarded

dreams of a simple…

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1696112/on-translating-kim-ok at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DANEZ SMITH | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

They/Them

By Danez Smith

said short: i feel more like a stud. said

with some nuance: as if i came to

masculinity through the women’s gate,

as if a daughter who grew into her father

but not like trans, but like trans or

a transformation without catalyst

or smoke. or more like born

in the right body too early or born

at the wrong time, in the wrong language.

i remember Tommy said he (is he a they now?)

lived for how i put it in that one poem “more

tomboy than boy” and i think that’s what

language does—builds a room made for living.

and who have i followed further into myself?

Cam, Paula, Tommy, Fati, Andrea, Auntie George

or anyone who saved me from a body of silence

by just living their lives in the sun? and if

the soul is a table on which the body sits

crowded with the meat and the marrow

and the red, red wine, around me sit

too many ghosts to ever rest in isolation.

of course you should address me in the plural.

said short: i am everyone. i am everything.

said shorter: i am.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690333/they-them at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DANEZ SMITH | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Dear Time,

By Danez Smith

now married, i’m in you different, in love

deeper, legally, under god and in front of my mama,

i know love different, love is a measure of you,

to love is to say i put my time next to your time,

i tie your time round my breath, sync my life

to your chance. stupid love, stupider still to get married,

i tie my time to you, to you who knows most intimately

what is wrong with me, who has seen me at my most naked,

ass out, my toothless ashy soul naked and cold

and shameful in front of god, what a thing, love, i am so happy

to be stupid this way. there’s a scar on the sidewalk

out our back door, a break in the ground that looks somedays

like a heart and somedays like Mexico, that’s racist,

he’s not Mexican but the first time my grandma was asking questions

about him she asked what kinda mexican is he? and I told her

Venezuelan so now I call him Venezuelan-Mexican when I want to be cute

and no this isn’t me canceling my grandma

because you, time, you cancel all grandmas, but she was speaking

within the limits of the language she has, pressing into that wall

for understanding and my grandma isn’t racist she’s difficult and careful

and nosey and serious and simple and a touch cold

and funny and a little mean and she spends her time in the kitchen

cause that work is how she loves us and she’s exactly the kind of poet

i want to be when i arrive deeper and frailer into time. so much of her time

she tied up in a man whose hands would cut thru space

to misunderstand her, to blacken the days around her eyes,

and she says she loved him, loves him, will love him. who could

we be if time loved us, if we spent our time in love, if we could see

what love has in store for us? who did i marry?

what kind of poet will i be at the edge of him?

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690335/dear-time at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

NATHANAEL JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Plaster [“A shallow depth of field produces flames”]

By Nathanael Jones

A shallow depth of field produces flames in a dimmed distance, harlequin patterned jit or juke, footwork. Each muscle in the face follows a separate choreographic text. Lie still. Now jump up. Reach out to touch a comparable hue. Blue in the writing or a film veiling a future.

These parts of the plot all live offscreen.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1694762/plaster-a-shallow-depth-of-field-produces-flames at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

NATHANAEL JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Plaster [“We paint all these rooms white”]

By Nathanael Jones

We paint all these rooms white without ever questioning the reasoning behind the labor. This fractured tongue hiding in the rafters. With it I saw holes in the ceiling between furring strips, collect grains of primer, plaster. Raster graphics embed the epithelial horizon with macros. Cue goosebumps. The battlefield in miniature called skin. Called race-gender. A very small patch of color or light held between body hair. Foundation or latent heat. And whose labor.

Trembling along the outskirts of corporeal consciousness, these and other awkward positions are a dance.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1694742/plaster-we-paint-all-these-rooms-white at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

NATHANAEL JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Plaster [“How a barn owl is never just a single barn owl”]

By Nathanael Jones

How a barn owl is never just a single barn owl.

Judgment lapsing into echo, collective

elastic pulling at the knees of aged locomotion.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1694756/plaster-how-a-barn-owl-is-never-just-a-single-barn-owl at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

NATHANAEL JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Plaster [“At another work site In a sister borough”]

By Nathanael Jones

At another work site in a sister borough, a neighbor hears me coughing and tells me she has been having nightmares: dreams within dreams. She wakes in her own bed to find a fine white dust covers her entire body. A flat sheet draping derelict furniture throughout the house. It is like heat, she says, choking on the words. And my children and parents too—they live with me—we can’t breathe at night. When I wake up for real I’m coughing. Parts of anecdotes are jettisoned in flurries: a coworker drinking from the same coffee mug, tar from the exposed roof rising with the afternoon sun, renovation debris drifting through the cracks between our two buildings. Now her eyes pin me like my mother’s. Now, she addresses me in a manner after an aunt. Listen, you look after yourself because you can’t expect them to. But also you—your work, this is the problem.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1694768/plaster-at-another-work-site-in-a-sister-borough at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

NATHANAEL JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Plaster [“In this song a drum takes itself apart]

By Nathanael Jones

In this song a drum takes itself apart. To keep pace move along tracks, dissolve into the points where mechanized production still retains a pulse. Skipping on and yet skipping the dance floor. Permanence is played at, implied, an arrhythmia as pavement. Perform arching gestures and observe an equally visible inversion take shape: a position in space loses its place-ness. Flee flicker resolution in diode dance. Don’t watch me; watch TV.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1694785/plaster-in-this-song-a-drum-takes-itself-apart at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

RODNEY JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Muse of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

By Rodney Jones

People who are like waves, rising and falling.

They imitate each other. People who get lost

When they ride with other people. They can’t

Concentrate or concentrate too long on this ad

Of a cowgirl fading into the concrete blocks

Of a standing wall. It freezes them. They’re stuck

In limbo with no clue where they’re not until

A buddy says hey! They always have a buddy

Going hey hey. Trouble being he’s a wave too

With no idea where he’s headed. My goddess

Felicity says this on our Tuesday morning drive

To Dunkin’ Donuts like it’s coming to her all at once,

But when she sees the furrow above my eyes,

Says No, you silly man, not you. Anyway, people

Like that, the wave people, they’re swell. Most

Wouldn’t hurt leukemia. Only they need blankies,

Like their mamas cut the feed too soon, and she knows,

She says she’s worked with scads of poets like that—

There are good things about them. They don’t mind

In the least if you take the wheel, but need a lot

Of reassurance. They do not make good designated

Drivers. Not that she seeks them in particular unless

They have muscular arms, in which case they make

Excellent office assistants. Not like they’re reprobates

Or poltroons. They stick to their guns. Besides,

Christ, she’s not looking for Dante Alighieri—

That stare then, like a hawk, blunt, frozen, oblique—

And then she takes my pen, dips it in ink, and says

You okay shug? You look sort of squandered

And pinched, like maybe your feet was killing you.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690339/the-muse-of-ocean-springs-mississippi at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

RODNEY JONES | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Grave-Digging

By Rodney Jones

It was July. I must have been sixteen or seventeen,

And proud to be chosen for a grown man’s work,

Hollowing out a box of air with a pick and a shovel

While the men above me, my father, grandfather,

And two of the dead man’s brothers who lived nearby

Encouraged me every now and then to take a break

And handed me a bottle of water from the spring.

I worked as fast as I could, squaring the corners,

Loosening the clay with the pick, then heaving it out

With the shovel, while the men talked winter crops

Or kidded me about my girl, who was fine looking

And had recently crossed a threshold and outgrown me.

As I dug deeper the clay got harder, more compacted,

And as I flung it out, some of it came back on me

And got into my eyes, so one of them would lower a hand,

I would clamber out, wash my eyes and start again.

Sometimes I would think of deep ideas as I worked,

Heaven and hell—were they real or only metaphors?

It was sad about Cousin Steve, but he was very old.

Sometimes I would imagine myself Keith Richards

Digging “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” with the shovel,

And this made time speed up until I was driving

Fast through mountain curves to be with my girl.

So I was in two places at once, over my head in the hole

And also kissing her when all of a sudden the ground

Went out from under me, and I was flying up over the edge

Of the grave, I do not think I ever touched bottom.

I breathed hard. I think I even shook, I was so frightened.

But then my father showed me a small, adjacent stone,

The grave of Cousin Steve’s son, stillborn in 1901.

What can we do? I asked. Go back down, he said,

And the brothers kindly nodded their heads.

I had wanted the grave to be formal like a dining room.

I found three buttons, a few shreds of burial cloth,

We all agreed no one ever need hear of this,

And the next day, Wednesday, we buried the father in the son.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690341/grave-digging at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

CAREY SALERNO | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Weeds (Accidentally on Purpose)

By Carey Salerno

I watched the first weeds burgeon and decided this was the summer

I wouldn’t stop them, every inch of crabgrass, every foot higher

the woody stem of nightshade, the rogue lily of the valley bells that slyly

migrate, and the hardwood scraggle of spruce, a bluegreen that somehow

found seed in our hospital-cornered flowerbed. God I was so tired of all that

order, of the clattering of stacking trays, of all that black mulch spread

between the lilies for which the deer came in the dead of night to devour

anyway. Who was I keeping things so prim for—just, after all, myself

... and maybe the neighbor’s sense of me which was also for myself—the

work of nursemaiding, ministering to each rock-lined border somewhat

satisfying until a week of lavish rain, of tangled-sheet dreams, the same

slogging offer of harvested reprobate grass was presented on my plate. No

appetite. Would rather go hungry than reheat such arduous leftovers. The

irises and milkweed soaring regardless, even as the neighbor’s forsythia

twined its way into all of their aspirational bedrock beneath the visible face

of the earth, its secret sickness, its slick nightsweat. So what, I countered,

some things are doing just fine coordinating with their ruin. What’s the

worst that happens—after all weren’t the neighbors even more uncaring

toward their landscape, refusing to prune back the tree whose branches

made moss on our gable shingles, the same tree whose trunk is full of

paper wasps, of carpenter bees? And further afield stronger substantiation:

the town taking to mow the yards of vacant houses? I mean fuck it.

When faced with all that overgrowth, doesn’t some large part of you want to

watch it manifest more, just a little bit, to see how wild things really

can get, how close to wreck we can let ourselves step without gripping the

back of each other’s shirts and ripping the body from the very edge, if we

can see it, see how deep the weeds might sow their roots before we can no

longer resist choking their arrogant necks and pulling them up into us?

Knot at our bellies. All that hair cuffed in your fist from the seedling grass

now grown in, a little nest of immaturity between the stones, all that

vinyl root ripping up the surface of the ground, threatening to take the

gentle stems of the morning glories with it when it goes. Maybe

we should let it? If it’s true there’s no longer room for weakness in this

world, and isn’t that how we’ve come to see fragility? There’s no scheduled

operation, no overbooked surgeon, nothing to cut neatly away from what’s

already been taken, what already has taken over, nothing to shape or

mulch down just a commingling of fluids in this wild bed where

everything comes to exist synchronically, roots wrapping roots

regardless of origin, of belonging to, wringing the water of themselves

out bit by bit. A healthy sacrifice under the right circumstances. And if I

want that, if I’d hoped for something less reactive and more Darwinian,

a low-stakes opening where I refuse to intervene, to let the strongest of us

triumph, to rewild my own urges in the confines of our rust-fenced yard

where the tiger swallowtails return to the hairy green perches of the rough

leaves of purple coneflower that lie open and arched against the afternoon

light, resting wings pressed together upon their lance-shaped faces, there’s

opportunity, if I can get myself to see it that way, to let myself feel what it’s

like to let anticipations go, to learn to revel in what might seem more like

mess but could just be learning, to accept what I can make by refusing to

act, or rather by acting out the very point of refusal, holding my arms at my

side, while the grackles plod in the yard pulling up blowfly larvae, how

maybe they might love me indirectly for such inaction, how that could be

the good in this, seeing how they begin to arrive in flock and stay long like

the swallowtail, plucking over the electric sheet of grass in need of a good

cut (nope!), how they hop into the wild of the weedy garden and wet their

silver legs on its dew, probe what’s buried in the cores of the hostas, whose

shady cups maybe they drink from though most likely not, it’s too

romantic and they’re not here for romance, nor are we, its time-consuming

preparations, but more some form of beauty we already well recognize, the

flashing heart which comes only by unproven exercise. Probably, too,

for the feel of the air upon their wings once they emerge from my snarled

labyrinthian green on green, to slowly catch chill when airborne they flee,

goose-pimpled, awakened as any grackle could be, as any one of us could be,

that way, if we so wanted, belly full, if we let ourselves free.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690343/the-weeds-accidentally-on-purpose at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

JIM JOHNSTONE | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Heaven

By Jim Johnstone

is just a garden, really.

A plot of land where you might reach down

to touch the snow

and crystallize.

I don’t know this for a fact.

Fact is

joy is as close as I’ve come

to a second act.

Maybe further.

During a craniotomy, metal screws were used

to refasten the wedge

of skull

that had been removed

to expose my brain.

The material

almost human.

Materially shaped with flame and driven into

the mind.

Cybernetic,

I can still pass

through a metal detector without setting off

an alarm.

The fire unharmed.

Look through

my head

and see the great waffle iron of the garden

glowing.

From the window seat you’ll notice

angels skiing.

Don’t take it from me.

There’s a god, right?

I got that straight from the horse’s mouth

when those

who inherited

the earth

decided they’d inherited idiom.

A neurosurgeon will tell you that using metal

to patch

a skull

is equivalent to picking up branches

and placing them

back on a tree.

Decorating purgatory.

In the air

cirrus,

stratus, and alto imitate aspects of the healed—

nonstop shadows

on an MRI.

Launch me into the atmosphere and eventually

I’ll want to return

to the field

where I was born

despite the fact that it’s burning.

There’s joy, even in hell.

Artificial time,

painted reeds,

the garden soaring, soulless, shaken like a snow

globe.

When I fly, I fly

though a metal detector

before joining the seraphim.

No alarm,

no end.

Now I have a little more time with the flowers

that interrupt

the runway’s

lift.

Thank you for this gift.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690345/heaven at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

JIM JOHNSTONE | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Evel Knievel Returns to Snake River Canyon

By Jim Johnstone

42.597°N 114.423°W

Bomber jacket trimmed with venom,

I pace the canyon like a parasite:

EK monogram, US flag, and cane,

the supplication of a reformed

sinner in prayer where jump

and jumper cross and become kin.

Months earlier, bolstered by the skin

of its teeth, the X1’s venom

overtook the sky, jumped

ahead and paralyzed my line of sight.

There’s always a new performance,

a new mantle where I balance my cane

before I ride out to conquer—Cain

overcome with freedom, a skinny

kid undertaking the transformation

from poor-man’s prophet to phenom

(the kind of stunt that relies on sleight

of hand). What’s next? To jump

or obey the body’s genius: don’t jump,

an unwritten rule as arcane

as reaction being action’s opposite.

I won’t tell you why I’ve defied my kin,

styled spit to mimic venom.

I won’t admit my bike is terraformed—

so like a rocket that I deform

just looking at it—but hope this jump

will be my last time alone. Venomous,

snake river cuts through yellow cane,

sagebrush, and volcanic skin

probing for weakness at the site

where I’m a dead man, the site

where pain is love’s confirmation.

Narrate these lines—each vulgar, skint

syllable—over the rebroadcast jump

and you’ll summon a hurricane

of doubt, leave my pride envenomed.

But when I’m out of sight, having jumped

(with good form) like a crane,

I’ll bear the mark of Armageddon.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690347/evel-knievel-returns-to-snake-river-canyon at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

YVANNA VIEN TICA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Operation 2020

By Yvanna Vien Tica

The cafe buzzes with so many voices it plugs my ears with the artillery of human noise. Man Behind Me taps my shoulder, gestures toward the cashier lady with her fatigued makeup. I am familiar with this. I spent hours in my room manufacturing my voice into something more human. In elementary school, my speech therapist awarded me with stickers for each sharp, beautiful word wrestled from my lips and for each accurate guess of my speech therapist’s sharp, beautiful sentences when she spoke behind a piece of paper that obscured her thin, caterpillar lips. Soon, I was guessing and saying everything with success, most days. These days because of the masks, less so. My speech therapist once told my mother that the hard-of-hearing often have prairie voices: flat-toned. She said this with as little of herself present, automatic like a coffee machine. Earlier, I had visited the public library and read in a parenting article that hard-of-hearing kids take things too literally. Hence my volatile confusion in elementary school when my speech therapist told me to “bite the bullet.” Hence my mother, after speaking with the speech therapist, going over a thin, crack-spined book of English idioms with me for weeks after. I cried in the library after reading the article until I thought I heard someone tell me to shut up though I saw nobody around, nobody at all.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690349/operation-2020 at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

CASANDRA LÓPEZ | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Language Studies: ‘Ahooyawpe’ / From the Air

By Casandra López

My phone is learning             Tongva. I try—

to type Eeyore and it autocorrects:             Eyooshiraaw / our language. /

Does the algorithm know             I want to wake

‘okook eyootoongen             / our sleeping mouth? /

My phone an extension      of self,

nechoochon / my eyes /      neshaar / my lungs. / I learn

‘ahooyawpe’ means:                                     from the air     and

can mean a telephone wire or radio sounds,                             perhaps even

a phone.

I name my phone chinuuho’ ‘ahooyawpe’     / from little air / or small

telephone wire /

Google and AI list all the concerns—

about using technology to revitalize languages. But I don’t need to read it

because I carry           worries as immense as               heteek /         the sky /

takaape’ moomat         / the blue ocean. /

Worry                                   / shaxáyyok ne’ee’enga / blooms in my bones. /

To ease my loneliness and fears about AI

colonization I try to gentle parent                     / chinuuho’ ‘ahooyawpe’/

Teach it to say: ‘Wiishmenokre / I love you.

Teach it: xaay manákmoro ‘eyooshiraaw’a kovaacho’ / not to forget our

beautiful language /

Wehee’pore yaayt         / May the two of us awaken. /

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690351/language-studies-ahooyawpe-from-the-air at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DMITRY BLIZNIUK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Підземний пляж

By Dmitry Blizniuk

квартири кришаться під вибухами

як трухляві пні.

автівки згорають немов тополиний пух.

тиша здувається

і лопаються бетонні бульбашки.

біженці сидять і лежать на матрацах та карематах

всередині метрополітену.

підземний пляж.

а зовні бухають хвилі.

ніхто не хоче вийти у вертикальне море смерті,

викупатися поглядом, обличчям

зануритися у небо міста.

ну ні. краще хвороблива засмага від ламп.

а кожен вибух забирає чиєсь життя –

чорний лелека, схожий на птеродактиля,

змащений соляркою.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

By Sergey Gerasimov

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690381/pidzemnii-pliaz at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DMITRY BLIZNIUK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Underground Beach

By Dmitry Blizniuk

Translated By Sergey Gerasimov

Translated from the Ukrainian

apartments are crumbling in the explosions

like rotten tree stumps.

automobiles are burning like fluff from poplars.

silence swells

and the concrete bubbles implode.

fugitives are sitting, lying on mattresses, on sleeping mats

deep inside the subway.

the underground beach.

the waves are thumping outside.

no one wants to walk out into the vertical sea of death,

to wash their face, their eyes,

to dip into the city’s sky.

no way. the sickly lamptan is preferred.

each explosion carries someone’s life away—

the black stork that looks like a pterodactyl

greased with diesel fuel.

Notes:

Read the translator’s note by Sergey Gerasimov.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

By Sergey Gerasimov

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690353/the-underground-beach at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DMITRY BLIZNIUK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Бомбосховище

By Dmitry Blizniuk

підвал. дальній кут і там старий

згорнутий у колючу більярдну кулю.

лікті й коліна випирають крізь потрісканий лак.

цифра 73.

під’їзд випнув нижню щелепу.

багатоповерхівка – вертикальний тарган з відірваною

головою.

ніч – чорний череп обтягнутий чорною шкірою.

пульсують жилки світла на шторах, не кури.

виходячи, завжди

натрапиш на летючу ракету поглядом.

якщо бутерброд падає під час війни –

то маслом в уламки.

тривожна звукова цвіль – виття сирени.

скажений звір обгриз пальці

проспекту, сліди від градів і снарядів.

тихо відхаркуючись, старий вийшов у ніч

помочитися на тлі

грізного зоряного неба.

ковтає слину з підборіддя.

війна як фотоапарат на павучих лапах

повільно повзе за тобою.

стежить.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

By Sergey Gerasimov

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690383/bombosxovishhe at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

DMITRY BLIZNIUK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Bomb Shelter

By Dmitry Blizniuk

Translated By Sergey Gerasimov

Translated from the Ukrainian

the basement. the remotest corner and an old man there

is curled into a thorny billiard ball.

the elbows and knees jut out through

the chapped varnish.

73 is the number.

the entrance thrusts out

its lower jaw.

the high-rise is a vertical cockroach with its head

torn off.

night is

a black skull wrapped in black leather.

the veins of light are pulsing on the curtains—don’t smoke!

when you are getting out, your eyes always catch

a flying rocket.

if a buttered toast falls in wartime

it always lands butter-side on the scattered shrapnel.

the wail of an alarm—

disturbing mold of sounds.

a rabid beast has gnawed off the fingers of

the avenue;

these pits are left by Grads and shrapnel.

coughing quietly, the old man

comes out of the basement to urinate against the background of

the terrible starry sky.

he swallows saliva from his chin.

the war like a photo camera on spidery legs

is slowly crawling behind your back,

watching you.

Notes:

Read the translator’s note by Sergey Gerasimov.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Article

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

By Sergey Gerasimov

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690355/the-bomb-shelter at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:24 PM EDT.

SERGEY GERASIMOV | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

BY Sergey Gerasimov

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

It may seem surprising, but falling bombs aren’t scary. They are sort of hypnotizing. You don’t feel fear when you find yourself lying on the underground beach, listening to the waves of war that thump above your head. You feel stupefied. However, “stupefied” is not the right word. The most evident characteristic of this altered state of mind is an almost complete absence of fear, while the second component of it is surprise: “How is it possible?” “Why?” It’s a cold, icy consternation, or translucent stupor—and here again, words fail. That is why it was so difficult for me to translate poems by Dmitry Blizniuk, who has been writing only about war since February 24, 2022, the date that refracted the life path of each of us. Words, even the best and most accurate of them, only scratch the surface—they cannot convey the essence of the experience.

And yet, translating Dmitry Blizniuk's poems was also easy for me. I, too, have been on the underground beach. I, too, have seen high-rises that look like vertical cockroaches with their heads torn off, blackened by fires and having no upper floors. Something that looked like cockroach legs stuck out of them. Water or gas pipes, perhaps. I’ve been inside them. From inside, they resemble nine- or sixteen-story crematoria full of burned lives—the charred bones of pets, a half-melted kitchen table flowing like a motionless waterfall, and concrete walls bent by a heat so merciless that you can see through several apartments at once. Some of the high-rises are shot through so that from outside the buildings you can look through the holes and see the sky and, circling in it, black birds, silhouetted like enemy bombers, like bombers coming to raze to the ground a city with a million and a half people in it: scientists, builders, doctors, students, and poets.

Those who survived are trying to speak out now.

Read the poems this note is about: “The Bomb Shelter” and “The Underground Beach” by Dmitry Blizniuk.

Sergey Gerasimov is a writer, poet, and translator. His books include Feuerpanorama: Ein ukrainisches Kriegstagebuch (dtv Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2022) and Oasis (Gypsy Shadow, 2018).

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Author

Dmitry Blizniuk

Dmitry Blizniuk is a poet from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, The Nation, Prairie Schooner, The London Magazine, Guernica, Pleiades, and many others.

Poem

Підземний пляж

By Dmitry Blizniuk

квартири кришаться під вибухами

як трухляві пні.

автівки згорають немов тополиний пух.

тиша здувається

і…

Poem

The Underground Beach

By Dmitry Blizniuk

Translated By Sergey Gerasimov

apartments are crumbling in the explosions

like rotten tree stumps.

automobiles are burning like fluff…

Poem

Бомбосховище

By Dmitry Blizniuk

підвал. дальній кут і там старий

згорнутий у колючу більярдну кулю.

лікті й коліна випирають крізь …

Poem

The Bomb Shelter

By Dmitry Blizniuk

Translated By Sergey Gerasimov

the basement. the remotest corner and an old man there

is curled into a thorny billiard ball.

the elbows…

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1696127/on-translating-dmitry-blizniuk at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

KATHLEEN ROONEY | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The

By Kathleen Rooney

Do you pronounce it “thuh” or do you pronounce it “thee”? Does thinking about it too hard give you the same squirmy feeling that it gives me? Repeat after me: the deceased, the inevitable.

When a yoga instructor gives cues that feel weirdly depersonalized—align the head directly over the top of the spine—I’m like, Wait, whose head? Whose spine?

Have I missed my chance to get in good with the in-crowd?

If one were the kind to get a literary tattoo, a good one might be the barred thorn, Old English abbreviation for “the.”

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Am I doing the work? What’s all the fuss?

A function word with a lot of functions: to indicate that a following noun is definite or has been previously specified by context or circumstance, to indicate that a noun is a unique member of its class. Put the cat out. Assassinate the President. Pray to the Lord. Visit the Alps, the Sahara, the Hebrides.

I challenge you to a race, from here to the daffodil with the little egg-yolky face.

Whence the convention of some bands taking “the” but others leaving it? Eagles and Talking Heads were initially article-free, though nobody’d ever try to make The Led Zeppelin happen.

I got my undergrad degree from GW. Excuse me, from The George Washington University.

I do have a fondness for bands with “the” in their name: the Replacements, the Clash, the Pixies, the Cure, though I’m ambivalent about The The.

Indefinite versus definite—how do we decide? “I don’t give a fuck” versus “Get the fuck out”? The basket of fucks to give sits empty.

Who around here is the adult in charge? What do you mean it’s me?

Elvis has left the building, but we are none the wiser. What’s the matter? Seize the day. The sooner the better.

“The” can refer to the singular or the plural. The company’s most overvalued asset is the CEO; the most undervalued is the workers.

Errata: my personal basket of fucks is a horn of plenty, an ever-renewable wellspring of endless fresh fucks. Maybe my tombstone can read: “Here lies the body of somebody who cared too much.”

The search to find the true self is a popular trope. Maybe that’s why “the” is a feature of so many nicknames: Mack the Knife. Catherine the Great. Jack the Ripper. The more the merrier!

Researchers have found that adults can change the five traits that make up personality—extraversion, openness to experience, emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness—in a matter of months. Just act as if you’re already the person you want to be.

The public internet was introduced in 1991: “Hello world, I’d like you to meet the Internet.” When I say “the moon,” I mean the moon.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

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CARSON WOLFE | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Silicon Valley, in the Backseat of a Tesla

By Carson Wolfe

stuck between two Texans

who can’t believe I don’t know

how blockchain works.

I am always around men

who know more than I do:

the professor of engineering

who said I had no business

homeschooling my daughter

if I don’t understand geometry.

Lectured about the lubrication

of my engine. In a festival yurt,

my grey aura, my big ego

which I must learn to transcend.

I came to San Jose for Pride,

but my couchsurfing host

had a spare ticket to the launch

of a secretary app named after

a woman. How quickly I ditched

the queers to party with men

old enough to be my fathers.

I always end up back here.

Which one of them is the wealthiest?

Which one of them can save me?

Strange, to barter with the idea

of myself in a floral apron,

floating across one of their ranches—

I’d never have to think

about bitcoin. Soon, they say,

this car will drive itself.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

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BRUCE BOND | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Night Class

By Bruce Bond

We would only get so far,

given the casualties

buried in each point of view.

This one, this one, this.

To see them was to smell them.

One by one.

Then we read Wilfred Owen,

a lyric

whose anger comes later,

after the specifics.

Take this face,

how the penlight of the medic

pierces the addled eye

just so far.

In each a sky so deep

it swallows up the stars.

Take this gate,

how it chatters like a telegraph key,

and you wake afraid,

knowing so little of your subject.

The siren

in the distance is no stranger

anymore.

It is headed

for your hospital wing,

where it could be a while,

if you are waiting for your son.

We could stare at the wall

together,

as some at altars do,

where the mouths

of nocturnal flowers

open to accept,

as sacrament,

a bee across the tongue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

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ASHA FUTTERMAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

broken lyre

By Asha Futterman

my hands are still my hands

like my grandfather’s hands

are his hands and they

are on the window

attached to the body

of a cabbage white

and in the casket

attached to a face

that isn’t his face

he died shoveling snow

that melted the next day

poetry makes nothing

happen

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

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ASHA FUTTERMAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

i am the machine and i work

By Asha Futterman

my job used to be teaching a machine

to recognize complaints filed against police officers

that contained allegations of sexual violence

it wasn’t very hard

all i had to do was read a lot of complaints

and tell the machine words

that were commonly used in the ones that alleged sexual violence

it didn’t work though

the machine could never find anything i hadn’t already found

the person i was working for told me and my coworkers

to read more complaints and give the machine more words

but there are only so many words

at a protest in the summer of 2020

she told a crowd of people to be quiet and lie down for eight minutes

i just did it but one person awoke from her fake death and yelled

i am sick of lying on the street

nonsense is violence

it’s also the view through my window

which is always cracked open

my neighbor sometimes sings

it’s bad but not annoying

he doesn’t mean for anyone to hear him

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

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MICHAEL ROBINS | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Thinking of It

By Michael Robins

Here before the sun rises, I find it difficult to make the words, to lean

forward three years after your death & unable to say for sure if I’ve

mentioned how in those first days our daughter would come & sit—

sweet, bewildered comfort—& lift her arm around me. In the darkness

of our new home, I search the nearness of your ordinary box, the

speckled dust & grit of what I imagine are your bones first in my hands

& then in my lap. Like some cruel joke, this closeness, & equally

absurd I ask aloud what you want for Christmas. Would you like to

close your eyes & feel the breeze? Claim the end of summer among the

dragonflies in our yard? Would you come to us & hold our daughter?

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690369/thinking-of-it at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

MICHAEL ROBINS | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Small Talk

By Michael Robins

I dreamed you called without reason, picking up where we left the

water months ago. Origins without metaphor, so much beginning with

the guy who loafed at the nurse’s station. Of all the things from my

second decade, a particular game of chess listening to Hendrix on

Haight Street. Of all the things we’d sleep a little later if we drove. I

ask again for the sky, the midstride morning & like a friend between

the porch & the seat beside me. I’m forty-seven years old & up beyond

these power lines the moon still follows me home. Of all the things

between us on the bed in the dark, you reading this on your birthday.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690367/small-talk at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

AMY WOOLARD | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Shiftless

By Amy Woolard

Day off that begins with James Tate & ends with Charles Wright

The wind makes a salad

Of the countryside & we still refuse

To learn each other’s last names. You get

What you pay-what-you-can for, is all. Love

Is not the thief love is still choosing to sleep

In the house the night after the thief

Has robbed it. Money burning

A hole in my tip jar. My kiltered love

Like a window AC leaking off

A second-floor sill. Almost everything

I can touch is an artifact I will have wanted

To’ve preserved as proof it all happened

Just this way. Sweet family meal—wave

Me down, however many seconds

It takes, the quiet Mississippi between

Them. Definition of prayer: let the perfect be

The memory of the good. If all you

Have is scissors, everything looks like

It’s hanging by a thread. Our days, these

Peonies are so brief & bound as fists.

When everyone shuts it down is when

We clock in. All explorers must die of heartbreak.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690373/shiftless at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

AMY WOOLARD | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Brunch Shift

By Amy Woolard

We burn in daylight but we love the dogs until they

Become stardust again. Like all dogs do, they love us

Better. Small trash in our front yards as we leave, soft pack

Wrapper, drugstore receipt. Like stardust our life is penciled

In, imagines itself forward only as a name a day

On a schedule. Noon is the loneliest number sings

The sparrow & I’ve got my bloodshot eye on him. Jolt

On the timecard like setting a fractured bone. Sweetheart,

Praise the checkered kitchen floor, still sticking

To its late-night story. Marry the ketchups & loosen

The tin caps on all the salts. How many hungry girls

Until the mourning dove tries to make the last train

Home. The math of what to leave us: move the decimal

To the left & then double it. Then swallow it. Then cough

It up until it’s not the cup that’s bottomless. The filter

Is what keeps my mouth & two fingers from turning

To ash right along w/the cig when I inhale. Too many

Of us will measure out the rest of our hours here

In smoke. I swear it’ll be funnier when it happens

If you think I’ve been joking. I was above all

Waiting for your fondness, the softest punch

Of light like pushing a pill through its foil packet.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690371/brunch-shift at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

JOANNA KLINK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Age at the Beginning of Knowing

By Joanna Klink

Woken again, this time by wings

scraping the air to pitch the warbler’s

heft from its tree. Its perch.

Is this what it means to grow old, to watch

a bird in March and track, from memory,

rocks and gulls, heat from the sea, mint

in a garden I would have liked to grow.

And the people I met, vivid and headstrong,

now like blown lights beyond the pine boughs.

Sublunar now, in the way of dreams.

What does it matter, this waking and sensing,

when even the immediate past pulls away.

Some skirmish

inside me, turning intolerable, gets me out the door.

Those friends and strangers, they were more

you than yourself. They kept you

from hardening into a poor clutch of desires.

Now blood moves like mist within my veins,

my legs tenuous against the dirt. Gray trees

glowing sticks bleached from winter.

Today my friend,

still young, wants only to live and can’t.

And my father, who is ready to die, can’t.

I feel the end of a way of being, as if on such a walk

I was borne in procession with them. And where

could I go that was not ending. I trust,

some, in moss at the wet edges of the path,

the wasps dangling their strange furred bodies,

and snow, mixed with paper trash, absorbed by mud.

Owls overhead watching me. I don’t see them.

The world once seemed laced with my own

displeasure. Now, on another botched day,

I am ghost-clear, my boots along the soggy banks

crushing prints of animals who last night

pressed on. Shed copper feathers. A breeze

against my eyes. I am more

spirit than I once was, less lashing windpack,

gathering myself into some vaster time,

which holds to tides, to fires in the hills

and the green shoots that, two years later,

push through char. To which mourning means

nothing. There is no longer any racing-away

in me, no explosive

stillness. Just a slender poise

that knows to open and shut, that steps

out the door then later, relieved, in.

Though the walk was beautiful.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690375/age-at-the-beginning-of-knowing at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

JOANNA KLINK | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Upon Receiving the Gift of a Handmade Box

By Joanna Klink

In the evening I drove home

through cold rain, headlights blearing

in the peripheries around me.

I saw them above the traffic light—

I might have missed them, they were so still.

Close to the sky, hundreds of grackles,

slash marks on the wires,

black and compact.

What drives anything to gather

in the rain like that, all of them in the rain

above such unease.

I don’t know anyone

content to sit like that.

_____

Once it held merchandise, personal

property. It was four-sided, made of wood.

Firebox, smokebox, spice box.

Jewel box—box of jewels.

Matchbox, ballot box, box of letters

and dice. Box of a person I might trust.

Box of coins or cash, box against loss,

burden of keys. Jury box, someone’s

house. Something gently shuts

as the lid shuts, to keep out injury and dust.

And no need for a lock or bolt,

it wears its jewels of woods—

turquoise at the latch. A box to store

the ghost-rain or paper-scrap,

a line someone scratched while lost to thought.

My friend worked for days on the box,

measuring and cutting,

always returning to the wood

that flooded his head with clouds.

When I am still, I can feel the labor

inside the wood, and hummingbirds,

and the years to come.

_____

I came this far—I walked out into the field

by the parking lot, in the moment

foolish with purpose, and tried

to read signs from the hills.

Hallucination of salt. Sparrows

in the distance lifting without sound.

To be placed forever in the high desert light,

winter brushing gold against nests of weeds.

Do I hold still because

I can’t go forward.

There are signs you can move

from stream to town and make amends.

There are chimes at dusk, silences

flooding the earth. What was

done to us, uncomprehending,

that we must fight our way toward the clouds

and lands that enclose us.

You can cross through a whole day

and not once take part.

_____

Today, some rivers are violet with mud

and curve out of sight.

Some animals burn. Women wake their children

and walk them to the bus. Like flowing gauze,

children race in the yards—they have only just arrived.

We hinge between the end of our lives

and their rootedness.

And a whippoorwill is pausing mid-call.

Someone practices cello—I hear it from the street

although no window is open.

At night, across the houses, the blue body of quiet

sways. One day the children might say

They stayed close to each other.

Who has heard the songs and not held out hope.

Who has wanted something only for

another—only that a burden be lifted,

that a stranger, or creature, survive.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690377/upon-receiving-the-gift-of-a-handmade-box at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

WIND CROSSING GRASSES: POEMS FROM CHINA’S DRAGON RIVERS

- Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers

- 时间开花了

- Time Is Blossoming

- 天涯海角

- At the End of the Earth

- 雪

- Snow

- 我们如此确信自己的灵魂

- We Believe in Our Soul

- 石头记

- The Story of a Stone

- 老虎与羚羊

- Tiger and Gazelle

- 光辉的一天

- A Glorious Day

- 叮嘱

- Please

- 三匹马在河边饮水

- Three Horses Drink Water at the Riverbank

- 故乡的距离

- The Distance of My Home

- 山谷

- Valley

- 大河流淌

- The Big Running River

- 阿拉善右旗走笔—曼德拉山脉岩画

- From “Rock Paintings in Alxa”

- 圪料街

- Geliao Street

- 曼德拉岩画记

- Rock Painting on the Mandela

WANG PING | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers

An Introduction to the folio.

BY Wang Ping

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

Poets Wang Ping and Guangzi at the Ox Bowl Bend of the Yellow River, 2023. Photograph by a passerby.

This folio brings together new poetry from the high mountains, steppes, and grassland of China’s west (Tibet-Qinghai), southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan), northwest (Gansu, Ningxia), and north (Inner Mongolia), following the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers’ upper reaches from their headwaters. Birthed from the same source on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the rivers have served as borders and forts for the state, as well as paths for commercial and cultural exchanges, such as the Silk Road. They also host the world’s richest resources, including water and minerals. Both rivers’ upper reaches pass through arid areas of high plateaus, turning the Gobi Desert into oases of cities and towns. Because of their vastness, altitude, and arid climate, these regions are the least populated by humans. These areas of breathtaking beauty are where plants and animals thrive, providing endless inspiration to poets and artists.

1/4

Old Ox Bowl, 2023. The Yellow River turns nearly 360 degrees here in Inner Mongolia before it begins its journey through the Jin-Shan Grand Canyon, which forms the border between the Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces. Photograph by Wang Ping.

2/4

Ordos, Inner Mongolia, 2023. Photograph by Wang Ping.

3/4

The Motorcycle Herder at Namtso Lake, Tibet, 2013. Photograph by Wang Ping.

4/4

Inner Mongolian Poet Li Jianjun and Wang Ping, Wuhai Wetland, 2003. Photograph by a passerby.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Confucius traveled along the Yellow and Yangtze with his students, collecting 风 (wind)—poems and music—to compile 诗经 (Shijing), the first poetry anthology in China. The rivers run across China like dragons. The poets sing along the shores, as the rivers’ heartbeats and wings, as time keepers. Today I retrace their steps on foot and by boat, train, and car to meet the poets from along the Yellow and Yangtze, to collect a new wind from the ancient land, to bring this sound and music across the oceans.

All water flows down mountains. All rivers run to the sea.

If you follow the mountains and rivers, you will find the poets.

They sing and dance with dragons.

Their songs awaken the dragons, lifting mountains and rivers to the sky.

That’s what poetry is: a wind, a leaf of grass that ties time and space together.

It’s about time we hear their songs in English.

These songs follow the rivers. If they move you, if you want to hear and feel more, please do not hesitate to follow the two rivers. It’s the only way to know China.

Wu Gorge, one of the Three Gorges along the Yangtze River, 2006. Photograph by Wang Ping.

This essay is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Poet, novelist, and artist Wang Ping was born in 1957 in Shanghai, China. She grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. She earned a BA in English from Beijing University before immigrating to the United States in 1985. Ping earned an MA in English from Long Island University and a PhD in comparative literature from New York University. During her undergraduate studies, she lectured in English...

Read Full Biography

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Poem

天涯海角

By Jidimajia

刚刚离开了繁忙的码头

又来到一个陌生的车站

一生中我们就这样追寻着时间

或许是因为旅途被无数次的重复

其实人类从来就没有一个所谓的终点

可以告诉你，我是一个游牧民族的儿子

我相信爱情和死亡是一种方式

而这一切都只会…

Poem

At the End of the Earth

By Jidimajia

Translated By Wang Ping

After leaving a busy dock

We come to a new railway station

We chase time like this all our lives

The journey…

Author

Wang Ping

Poet, novelist, and artist Wang Ping was born in 1957 in Shanghai, China. She grew up on a small island in the East China Sea. She earned a BA in English from Beijing University before immigrating to the United...

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1690415/wind-crossing-grasses-poems-from-chinas-dragon-rivers at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

MO FEI | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

时间开花了

By Mo Fei

仿佛白露之后满院的桂香。影子说话

虎尾草说话，树上的葫芦提起来不出声

出声就会拽我们笑我们。时间开花了

结果在前面，又惊又喜却只有一次

风声响彻屋顶。干干净净的字句

隐去了两片树叶。田垄上的野莴苣

不知道摇晃的玉米为什么。不知道秋天

从哪一天开始。荞麦和高粱在山两边

鸟儿们知道收成怎么样。只有你来过

从雨的滴答里清点新的事物。白露之后

大地上的工作行将结束。造拱圈的人

用不上石头，而石头配得上每一块废墟

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690385/shi-jian-kai-hua-liao at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

MO FEI | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Time Is Blossoming

By Mo Fei

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

As if sweet olives blossomed again after the first Bailu frost, shadows

Talk, tiger tail grass talks, only gourds stay silent when pulled from trees

Talking gourds pull and mock us. Time blossoms with its fruit

Before the flowers. This surprising joy happens only once

Wind blows on the roof. Clean words and sentences

Wipe out the last leaf. Wild lettuce grows in the fields

The corn is shaking and nobody knows why. No one knows when

Autumn starts. Sorghum and buckwheat grow on each side of the mountain

But birds know how good this year’s harvest is. They come

To count new things in the dripping rain. After the first Bailu frost

The work on earth will end. The Stonehenge makers

Don’t use stones, but stones exist in all the ruins

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690419/time-is-blossoming at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

JIDIMAJIA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

天涯海角

By Jidimajia

刚刚离开了繁忙的码头

又来到一个陌生的车站

一生中我们就这样追寻着时间

或许是因为旅途被无数次的重复

其实人类从来就没有一个所谓的终点

可以告诉你，我是一个游牧民族的儿子

我相信爱情和死亡是一种方式

而这一切都只会发生在途中

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690387/tian-ya-hai-jiao at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

JIDIMAJIA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

At the End of the Earth

By Jidimajia

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

After leaving a busy dock

We come to a new railway station

We chase time like this all our lives

The journey seems to repeat itself

But we never reach the so-called destination

Let me tell you, I am a Nomad’s son

Love and death are nothing but a way of living

And everything happens along the path

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690421/at-the-end-of-the-earth at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

A XIN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

雪

By A Xin

静听世界的雪，它来自我们

无法测度的苍穹。天色转暗，一行诗

写到一半；牧羊人和他的羊群

正从山坡走下，穿过棘丛、湿地，暴露在

一片乱石滩上。雪是宇宙的修辞，我们

在其间寻找路径回家，山野蒙受恩宠。

在开阔的河滩上，石头和羊

都在缓缓移动，或者说只有上帝视角

才能看清楚这一切。

牧羊人，一个黑色、突兀的词，

镶嵌在苍茫风雪之中。

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690389/xue at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

A XIN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Snow

By A Xin

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

Listen to the snow on earth, falling upon us

From the unknown space. Sky darkens—a line of poetry

Is half complete; the shepherd and his sheep are

Coming down from the hill, through thorns, wetland, exposed

On the Gobi. Snow is decorating the cosmos, as we

Seek our path to get back home, and the mountains are joyful.

On the open riverbanks, rocks and sheep

Move slowly. Only gods can tell

Their difference, perhaps.

Studded against the whiteout snow,

The shepherd stands like a sore black word.

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690423/snow at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

XIWA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

我们如此确信自己的灵魂

By Xiwa

我们如此确信自己的灵魂

比我们看得见，摸得着的肉体

更为确信，仿佛我们真的见过她

亲手抚摸过她，弯下身来为她洗过脚

在夜间闻过她腋窝里的汗味

在清晨听过她的哈欠声与唇语

我们如此确信我们的灵魂

确信她比我们的肉体更干净，更纯粹，更轻盈

仿佛我们的肉体，一直是她的负担

我们蔑视一个人，常常说他是一个没有灵魂的人

我们赞美一个人，常常说他是一个有灵魂的人

是什么，让我们这样振振有词，对没有凭据的东西

对虚无的东西，对无法验证的东西

充满确信？

如果有一天，一个明证出现

说灵魂是一个又老又丑又肮脏的寄生物

她仅凭我们的肉体得以净化，并存活下去

崩溃的会是一个，还是一大群人？

从崩溃中站立起来的人，或者从没倒下的

会是怎样的一群人？或一个？

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690391/wo-men-ru-ci-que-xin-zi-ji-de-ling-hun at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

XIWA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

We Believe in Our Soul

By Xiwa

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

We believe in our soul

More so than our visible, touchable flesh

We believe in our soul, as if we had seen her

Touched her, bent down to wash her feet

As if we’d smelled the sweat in her armpits

Heard her morning yawn and whisper

We believe that our soul is cleaner

Than our flesh, purer and lighter

As if our body was her burden

When we insult someone, we say he’s soulless

When we praise him, we say he has a soul

What made us believe so firmly in something

So ephemeral, so impossible to prove?

If one day the proof shows

That our soul is just a parasite, old, ugly, and dirty

Depending on our flesh to live, to purify

How many of us will collapse?

What kind of people will stand still

Or rise from the ruins

One person or an entire community?

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690425/we-believe-in-our-soul at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

LIANG PING | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

石头记

By Liang Ping

裸露是很美好的词，

不能亵渎。只有心不藏污，

才能至死不渝地坦荡。

我喜欢石头，包括它的裂缝，

那些不流血的伤口。

石头无论在陆地还是海洋，

无论被抬举还是被抛弃，

都在用身体抵抗强加给它的表情，

即使伤痕累累。

我的前世就是一块石头，

让我今生还债。风雨、雷电，

不过是舒筋活血。

我不用面具，不会变脸，

所有身外之物生无可恋。

应该是已经习惯了被踩踏，

明明白白的垫底。

如果这样都有人被绊了脚，

那得检查自己的来路，

我一直在原地，赤裸裸。

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690393/shi-tou-ji at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

LIANG PING | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Story of a Stone

By Liang Ping

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

Naked is a good word

That must not be desecrated.

The heart doesn’t hide dirt,

So it can beat free till it dies.

I like stones, and their cracks,

With wounds that don’t bleed.

Their bodies resist any forced expressions

Whether they lie on land or at sea,

Whether they are lifted high or abandoned,

Even if they are covered with scars.

My previous life is a stone.

I’m still paying my debt.

Wind, rain, thunder, and lightning

Stretch my body and move my blood.

I don’t wear a mask or change my face,

Nothing in this world makes me feel attached.

I’m used to being stamped upon,

Used to lying at the bottom.

If someone stumbles on me,

That person needs to examine himself,

As I’ve been lying in the same spot, naked.

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690427/the-story-of-a-stone at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

ZHAI YONGMING | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

老虎与羚羊

By Zhai Yongming

半夜 有人在我耳边说：

我醒了，你们还在沉睡

世界像老虎 在梦里

追着你追着你

世界的万物都像老虎

它们一起追赶你这只

细脚蹱的羚羊

永恒的天敌绝不放过你

即使在梦中 即使在虚空

早上 2021大年初一

我慢慢读着马雁的诗

细嚼慢咽地把那些词语吞下

然后拧亮台灯 打开手机显示屏

那是我的面孔还是老虎的面孔？

老虎念着诗 而我动着嘴唇

她也是这样一颗一颗

吐出星星的瑰丽吗？

她也是这样被追赶着

被躯使着 被抓挠着

直至跌入黑暗？

她在黑暗中醒来

还是我在明亮中逝去？

那只老虎斜刺里冲出

抓住你 那只利爪

不！那是锋利的刀刃

剌进你的肉体

你被一缕透明的锋芒

一片一片剖开 化作光晕

星星就是这样亘古永久地

吐出一颗又一颗瑰丽

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690395/lao-hu-yu-ling-yang at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

ZHAI YONGMING | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Tiger and Gazelle

By Zhai Yongming

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

Midnight         someone whispered at my ear:

I’m awake, but you’re still sleeping

The world runs like a tiger                     chasing

You on and on             in your dreams

Everything in the world is like this tiger

Chasing you together

This thin-legged gazelle

They’re your eternal predators

Even in your dreams     even in the empty space

Dawn 2021                     first day of the Chinese New Year

I was reading Ma Yan’s poems

Chewing each word slowly, then swallowing the sentence

I turned on the desk lamp       the face that appeared

On my phone     was it me or tiger?

The tiger was reciting the poem             I was moving my mouth

Was she spitting stars

One by one, dazzling?

Was she being chased like this

Captured           vanished

In the abyss?

Did she wake up in the dark

Or was it me who died in the light?

That tiger leapt out of the corner

To catch you       its sharp claws

No! Its sharp knife plunged into your flesh

Slicing you into pieces

Into halos

This is how stars spit

Beauty     one by one         eternally

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690429/tiger-and-gazelle at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

YU JIAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

光辉的一天

By Yu Jian

光辉的一天——太阳照耀着万物

有块白石在佛蒙特州的森林里发光

乔·布雷纳德之墓 美国诗人

1942–1994在世 俄克拉荷马的高中少年啊

戴着副黑框眼镜 谁读过你的诗？

青山下 湖泊安静 鸟在午睡

我记得 睡莲还在开着 夏天已近尾声

死后 罗恩和肯沃德搬运了很久

一块石头穿越松树林 熊和落叶都靠边站

白得像一块耻骨 纪念 没有文字

六十年代 哥们常在这里饮酒

抽大麻 听松 坐在坡上看落日

我摸摸那石头 被烫着似地缩回手来

太凉 正像传说中的天才之额

世界这炉子热火朝天 它们总是

冰凉如石

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690397/guang-hui-de-yi-tian at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

YU JIAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

A Glorious Day

By Yu Jian

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated  from the Chinese

A glorious day—sunlight on everything

A white rock shines   in the Vermont woods

That’s Joe Brainard’s grave   an American poet

1942–1994   graduate of an Oklahoma high school

Wearing dark-rimmed glasses         Who has read your poems?

Under the green mountains   the lake is quiet   the birds are napping

I remember   water lilies   summer near its end

When he died   Kenward brought it here

A rock through the woods   bears and fallen leaves make way

White like a bone   in his memory   no words

In the sixties   they were here   drinking

Smoking weed   listening to the pines   watching sunset on the hill

I touch the rock   recoil as if scorched

So cold   like the geniuses’ foreheads

Cool like a rock

In this world that burns like a furnace

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690431/a-glorious-day at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

YE ZHOU | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

叮嘱

By Ye Zhou

将一盏灯送进

石窟，也别忘了

带一把青稞。

将一棵菩提

栽上壁画，也别忘了

供一碗净水。

将一尊佛像请进

敦煌，一定别忘了

养一对羔羊。

菩萨不会走。

可万一走了，这些

就是我们疼痛的拌料。

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690399/ding-zhu at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

YE ZHOU | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Please

By Ye Zhou

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

Please bring a light

Into the grotto cave, please don’t forget

To bring a handful of barley.

Please plant a Bodhi tree

On the grotto painting, please don’t forget

To offer a bowl of clean water.

Please bring a Buddha’s statue

Into Dunhuang, please don’t forget

To bring a couple of lambs.

Buddhas don’t walk away.

But if they do leave us,

Sorrow will stay forever.

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690433/please at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

CHI LECHUAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

三匹马在河边饮水

By Chi Lechuan

一匹雪白，一匹枣红，一匹黝黑

三匹马在河边饮水

它们此起彼伏地饮着，有一阵子，它们

一起把头伸进河里

仿佛一条河，是从它们口中

流出来似的

它们源远流长的心思

还是那么单纯，清澈，波澜不惊

天色一点点暗淡下来

一个人眼睁睁看着

一条河，被三匹马叼着

消失在暮色中

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690401/san-pi-ma-zai-he-bian-yin-shui at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

CHI LECHUAN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Three Horses Drink Water at the Riverbank

By Chi Lechuan

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

One white, one red, one black

Three horses are drinking at the riverbank

They drink at their own pace, some up

Some down

Sometimes their heads reach the river

At the same time

As if a river were flowing

Out of their mouths

As their minds flow from the river source

Still innocent, clear, undisturbed

The sun is setting slowly

A man watches, without blinking

How a river disappears into the night

Held in the mouths of three horses

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690435/three-horses-drink-water-at-the-riverbank at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:25 PM EDT.

ENKEHADA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

故乡的距离

By Enkehada

黎明时分，梦已被撕裂

从缝隙间向外望去

一幅画的空间里

站立着大象般的骆驼

在她的眼里

我看见了故乡

中午下班回家

冬的天空，支离破碎

阳光从孔隙里流淌

凝望墙上的壁画

发情的儿驼眼里

闻得见青草的气味

放眼眺望四周，都是足迹——

比雪白的是驼羔回家的足迹

比土热的是佛祖云游的足迹

从画中剥落的是白雪冰凉的足迹

比眼睛还黑亮的是故土迁徙的足迹

夜在黑暗逼近我

我在诗的光芒中做了一个梦

梦在空间里——

鞍屉尚未烘干之时

用梦里着凉的手指

抚摸墙上的画

形状是沙漠的形状

面积是故乡的大小

剥落的距离是

从乡村到城市的距离

痊愈的时间

直到超越梦境——

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690403/gu-xiang-de-ju-chi at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

ENKEHADA | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Distance of My Home

By Enkehada

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated  from the Chinese

At dawn, my dreams are torn

Looking through the cracks

I see a painting

Of a camel as big as an elephant

In her eyes

I see my home

At noon I come home from work

The winter sky is broken into pieces

The sunlight flows in from holes

I gaze at the painting on the wall

The camel is in heat, in its eyes

I smell green grass

I look around, footprints everywhere ...

The snow-white prints belong to the baby

Camels coming home

The prints hotter than the earth belong

To Buddha roaming around the world

The cold prints like ice belong

To the broken painting

The prints darker than my eyes belong

To those who have left home

In the dark, night is approaching

I have a dream in the light of poetry

My dream floats in space—

The horse saddle is still wet

My cold fingers

Stroke the painting on the wall—

The desert in the shape of sand dunes

Is the size of my home

The distance of chipping and breaking

Is the distance between countryside and city

The time to heal

Is beyond the dream

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690437/the-distance-of-my-home at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

LI JIANJUN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

山谷

By Li Jianjun

这是夏天的某一个上午

我得到了一条山谷

以及山谷里的马匹

羊群、百灵鸟和九十九棵山杏树

然而我不能告诉你这条山谷的名字

这是我对神做出的承诺

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690405/shan-gu at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

LI JIANJUN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Valley

By Li Jianjun

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated  from the Chinese

One morning in summer

I came upon a valley

With a school of horses

Sheep, larks, and ninety-nine apricot trees

I won’t reveal the valley’s name

This is my promise to the gods

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690439/valley at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GUANGZI | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

大河流淌

By Guangzi

大河流淌，一去千里

我在岸上恍惚站了一生

时光奔涌，岁月漂移

流淌的大河只剩下波浪和泥沙

我替曾经的人站在岸上

我替一条大河无边无际的流淌

大河流淌，天地寂寥

仿佛大河从不流淌

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690407/da-he-liu-tang at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

GUANGZI | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

The Big Running River

By Guangzi

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

The flowing river, running a thousand li

I’ve been standing on its shore, in a daze

Time rushes forward, centuries also flow

Only waves, sand, and mud are left behind

I stand on the shore for the passing humans

I flow endlessly for the big river

The running river, between sky and earth

Standing still, as if it had never moved an inch

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690441/the-big-running-river at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

WEN GU | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

阿拉善右旗走笔—曼德拉山脉岩画

By Wen Gu

黑色的岩石上，雨珠碎裂

青色的岩石上，星星一滴一滴溅落

一千年、一万年，古老的风在唱:

“一万个、一千个，相似的夜晚”

骆驼的背后，有历史的风暴升起

山羊的唇角，留着沙葱花的清香

别问我们祖先们的秘密

闪电已经刻在了石头的脸颊上

走近曼德拉山

雄鹰将背上驮着的青色天空

悄悄地卸在曼德拉山冈上

盘羊带着白色云朵

麋鹿披着细碎的花瓣、跑进岩石

清澈的月光，从石缝里涓涓溢出

细细的风、溪流一样

向你娓娓讲述

古老游牧民族的生活

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690409/a-la-shan-you-qi-zou-bi--man-de-la-shan-mai-yan-hua at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

WEN GU | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

From “Rock Paintings in Alxa”

By Wen Gu

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated  from the Chinese

Rain breaks on black rocks

Stars fall, one by one, on blue stones

A thousand years, ten thousand years

And the wind sings: “Ten thousand

One thousand, all nights are the same”

History storms out of the camels’ backs

Cooking fragrance lingers between goats’

Lips. Don’t ask the secrets of my ancestors

Their thunder is carved on the faces

Of these rocks

The eagle carries blue sky and

Drops it on the ridge of the Mandela

White clouds ride on the heads of mountain

Goats. An elk runs into the rock, dressed

In flowers. Moonlight trickles out of stones

Wind flows like a stream

Telling a story

Of the ancient nomads

My ancestors lived here

Where tall grasses grow

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690443/from-rock-paintings-in-alxa at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

YUAN XIN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

圪料街

By Yuan Xin

一条小巷道，长220米，宽6.3米。

26年前的早晨，席力图召西侧，

骑着单车走过；10年前元宵节的夜晚，步行而过。

“圪料街”遗址，瓦屋三间，坍圮的砖坯墙，

立在大街正中，柏油马路到这里截断。

墙砖摇摇欲坠，

瓦片长草，土坯里的草籽发芽。

光阴在这里“弯曲”，”不直溜”，

这是呼和浩特的此地话——“圪料”。

走近夕阳下的旧砖墙，一个声音响：

您已走到警戒区域，请离开。

您已走到警戒区域，请离开。

一个人走过，与两个人走过，

有何不同？

瓦片下的木窗格弯曲，变形。

对面大盛魁商号，

清末山西商人创建，有多进四合院。

仰望着屋顶的滴水檐，

木窗格里的土坯一块一块掉落。

这或许是26年前，我家

租住的9处平房中的一个。

一间朝北的瓦房，不敢敲打墙壁，

父母步山西商人后尘而来，

做了20世纪90年代商场里的个体户。

父亲现在喜欢穿翻毛皮袄，

蒸的烧麦口味来自著名的“德顺源”。

母亲的手工鞋垫摊，摆在五塔寺东边，

一直摆到大年三十儿中午。

圪料街最后几间旧瓦房被圈起来。

粉色雪地靴踏进雪泥，零上五六度，

辛丑年的春天，包围我的过去

和一座旧城。

乾隆皇帝喝过的玉泉井边——灵泉泻玉，

风从西北起，

脚步退回到26年前。

14岁的少年

走在黄昏里，街边一溜小店铺：

红白喜事铺，布匹，古董，

旧家具，狼皮，服饰，鹿头，

拨浪鼓，阿拉善沙漠石，烧麦馆，

奶茶馆，杂碎馆，翘起的石板路。

少年嘴里哼着呼麦——

一起走过的路，如今已经“圪料,”

弯曲的时光，如刀入鞘。

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690411/ge-liao-jie at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

YUAN XIN | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Geliao Street

By Yuan Xin

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

A little lane, 220 meters long, 6.3 meters wide.

Twenty-six years ago, I biked past the west side of Xilituzhao,

Then again, thirteen years later, at the Lantern Festival.

The ruins of “Geliao” Street, a three-room house,

With a tile roof and collapsing mud walls,

In the middle of the tar road, weeds grow.

Through tiles, sprouting grass on walls,

Time bends here, unable to go straight,

And locals at Hohhot call it: Geliao.

A voice blasts at twilight when I get close to the wall:

Warning: please leave this guarded area.

Warning: please leave this guarded area.

A street with one passerby, or two.

Is there a difference?

Under the weight of tiles, the window bends

And twists, still holding up time. From the roof

I can see “Big Prosperous Champion,”

Built by a Shanxi merchant, at the end of Qing Dynasty.

Then it was turned into a housing complex for rent,

Water dripping from the tiles.

Can’t make an icicle on the collapsing window.

My family moved here from the middle kingdom twenty-six years ago,

Rented one of the nine rooms here.

The northern wall is too fragile to be touched or knocked.

Father and Mother followed the Shanxi merchants in the 1990s,

Rented a small stand in the market.

Now Father wears a fur coat,

Eating dumplings with the flavor of De Shun Yuan,

Mother still sells her handmade insoles at the Five Towers market,

She kept her stand open till noon on New Year’s Eve.

Geliao Street is surrounded by the last standing houses,

I go out in my pink snow boots, though it’s only 41°F.

The Year of the Ox and its spring surrounded my past

On the merchant street of an old city.

The well that quenched the Qing Emperor’s thirst.

—Flowing Jade of Soul Spring

The wind blows from the northeast.

Twenty-six years ago, a fourteen-year-old teen

In the warm twilight walked past the stands:

For weddings and funerals, fabric, antiques,

Old furniture, wolf skin, cloths, deer heads,

Rattles, rocks from Alxa Desert, dumpling diner,

Tea house, odds and ends store, uneven stone slabs.

He was throat humming ...

The old path is geliao—twisted and bent,

Like time, like a sword entering the sheath.

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690445/geliao-street at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

A’ER | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

曼德拉岩画记

By A’Er

这一刻是沙漠从云端耸起

沉下的是恒河之旅

那是洗不去的光阴

一个小时代的美好派对

一支雪茄飘出的哈瓦那

曾经还是左派的年月

格瓦拉的伏特加扁酒壶

塞进一张列侬和洋子的美颜照

那时我们多么热爱和平

其实更是在渴望爱情

这一刻便是远去的阿拉善

蒙古高原穿越呼麦的长啸

喝一口六十度的二锅头

雄起的却是那些石头

在山岗上暴晒着自身

这是另一种囚禁似的降临：

明月高挂曼德拉岩画峰顶

就连石头也静默如渺小

而她降临

或者星光和陨石

或者我们已不是

自我的拿铁或者卡布奇若

一柄小勺

正好搅动舌尖的那一粒蜜糖

这似乎是奇异的世界

当石头降临

街角再也没有带刀之徒

他和那些人在黑暗中闪烁

更多的石头将我们和羊群淹没

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690413/man-de-la-yan-hua-ji at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

A’ER | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Rock Painting on the Mandela

By A’Er

Translated By Wang Ping

Translated from the Chinese

It rises from the desert into clouds

It sinks into the river of eternity

Time can’t wash away

Its short-lived glory

Like the fragrance of a Havana cigar

Or the storm of the leftists’ era

Vodka in a flask

A photo of Lennon and Yoko

Oh how we loved peace

No we were just thirsty for love

Like the Alashan in the distance

The Mongolian Plateau passes by us, whistling

As I gulp down the spirit of Erguotou

The rocks keep rising

Exposing themselves on the hills

Like locked up prisoners

The moon hangs over the Mandela’s

Painting. The rocks seem quiet

Waiting for the arrival

Of light and falling stars

We stir our cappuccino

With a spoon

Honey on the tip of the tongue

This is a strange world

When rocks arrive

Nobody will carry knives

Glistening in the dark streets

Rocks will drown us and our sheep

Notes:

This poem is part of the portfolio “Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers.” The folio is an excerpt from the forthcoming anthology of the same name, translated and edited by Wang Ping, with a co-introduction from Gary Snyder (Kinship Poetry Press, 2026). You can read the rest of the folio in the July/August 2025 issue.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690447/rock-painting-on-the-mandela at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

NOT TOO HARD TO MASTER

- How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

- Writing Prompt: Pantoum

- how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

- how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

On memory, oral history, and honoring elders.

BY River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

Art by Derek Brahney.

I grew up in a household where our stories were not seen as worth documenting, both in dominant US culture and within my own family. Each time I asked my grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncles about their stories, they would say, what is there to tell? The past was seen as past. Yet, over herbal soup and chopsticks clinking to porcelain bowls, they would talk with each other about Toisan, the land of fresh eel clay pot rice and volleyball. I would slurp the last grains of rice and listen intently, watching memory unravel across the kitchen table.

My grandparents were children during the Japanese colonial occupation of China in the second Sino-Japanese wars of the thirties and forties. They raised my parents during the Cultural Revolution of the sixties and seventies. Much of their lives were shaped by survival and enduring farm labor before they migrated to New York City. There, my parents met in the eighties. I grew up in Staten Island, as one of the few Asian students in my entire school. When my teacher asked us to interview our parents to learn of their childhoods, my peers told stories about their parents growing up in the suburbs, about grandparents who owned ranches. My mother would slip me stories of her mother during wartime. I would write down what was asked of us: birthplace, birth year, favorite childhood memory. The rest, I took to poetry.

I read my first Asian American poets in high school. My English teacher introduced me to the poetry of Kimiko Hahn and Ishle Yi Park. Another encouraged me to share my poetry at the open mic after school. I remember standing at the library podium, voice trembling, and reading a poem straight from my notebook. Afterward, friends and peers shared how my words resonated with them. My writing reminded them of their own family stories. For the first time, I saw how vulnerably sharing my own work could reach and move others. Emboldened, I became hooked on the power of poetry and began to use poems to tell stories of my family and my diasporic community in Chinatown. In college, I joined a research team led by the late scholar Jean Lau Chin to document stories of Chinese Americans who grew up in Manhattan’s Chinatown in the thirties, forties, and fifties. After graduation, I was awarded a fellowship to travel to Chinatowns around the world to trace stories of migration, displacement, and resilience across the diaspora. In a year, I traveled to eight countries from Peru to Australia. My early career and research was devoted to learning the historical and sociopolitical stories of my people, a community still marginalized and derided in the America I knew. Yet, in my decade of oral history work, the most difficult stories to record and tell were the ones within my own family.

My grandfather, my 爺爺, swam from southern China to Hong Kong in the seventies to escape what he saw as dead-end devastation during the Cultural Revolution. Growing up, I had heard stories of this escape from family members, yet my grandfather rarely spoke about it. There was a layer of shame to 偷渡, “illegally” crossing. Yet, his feat is the reason my dad’s side of the family was able to come to America. From 1974 to 1980, Hong Kong, under British colonial occupation at the time, allowed Chinese refugees who “touched base” on their soil to remain. Knowing this, my grandfather secretly trained in the bay to swim across the manmade border. Once he made it, he was then able to seek asylum in the United States. This is how I was born in New York City.

when searchlights flooded our vision

i pretended the sun was rising

liberation army cuffed us home soon.

record that in this pantoum.

i pretended the sun was rising

when rocks scraped scalps & wood splintered knees

record that in this pantoum

i waited for the scars, & returned.

rock-scraped scalp & wood-splintered knees

bandaged in 嬤嬤’s scolds, congee, & lotus root

i waited for the scars, & returned

new hing dai came searching for a guide.

—From “how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)”

_____

I first learned about the pantoum in a mentorship intensive with Kundiman, a national literary organization dedicated to Asian American writers. As a fellow, I worked with my first genderqueer Asian American mentor, Ching-In Chen, across five months. It was in the early days of the pandemic when we were still adjusting to remaining in place. We would gather weekly on Zoom to workshop poems. For the first time, I felt I didn’t need to explain all the parts of myself in order to be seen. Upon reading an earlier version of my poem about my grandfather’s crossing, they asked me, have you heard of the pantoum? I hadn’t. Today, five years later, it is one of my favorite forms to write and teach in college classrooms.

The pantoum has roots in Malaysian oral storytelling. First recorded in the fifteenth century, the pantun is a form of rhyming couplets regarded as part of classical Malay literature. For hundreds of years, it spread through trade routes and migration. The pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains—stanzas with four lines—was later adapted by French and English writers. The form was popularized among Western writers in the nineteenth century when Victor Hugo included a French translation of a Malay pantun in his book Les Orientales, a text often cited for its Orientalist portrayal of Turkish people. Around the same time, the British government took colonial control of Malaysia. The form’s history is inseparable from its country’s. Yet even though its proliferation is one dipped in colonialism, becoming widely “known” only when published by Western writers, I get to decide how I wield its lineage.

In the pantoum, the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeat to become the first and third lines of the next. In the final stanza, the second and fourth lines are the third and first lines, respectively, of the very first stanza. Traditionally the form uses an ABAB rhyme scheme. Some contemporary pantoums keep the rhyme, while others diverge. The repetition of the lines creates an echoing effect. Because of this, I find pantoums lend themselves well to documenting oral history, memory, elders’ stories, and emotions that cycle, like grief and loss. The form can be one that gives way to writing about what haunts us. I chose the form for my poems on harrowing family histories for these reasons.

As I studied contemporary pantoums, I turned to Kiandra Jimenez’s “Halcyon Kitchen”—which keeps the ABAB rhyme scheme—for the ways she writes intergenerational remembrances of a grandmother through cooking and food. I also dove into Aurielle Marie’s “pantoum for aiyana & not a single hashtag,” which honors the life of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones and conjures a reality in which Aiyana is still alive. In their piece, the repeated lines shift and propel the poem forward. These writers’ devotion to preserving life and memory across generations, against forgetting, made room for my own.

_____

One afternoon, as I visited my grandparents in Brooklyn, my 爺爺 decided to share his story of crossing. I sat in his living room, mesmerized, as the words I had waited so long to hear directly from him came spilling out. As he spoke, images seared: the fishermen who helped him and his brothers onto a boat, the sharks in the water, the bowls of rice he ate once he finally made it to Hong Kong. There were certain phrases he repeated that became ingrained in me: you had to know the currents, you had to not be afraid to die. As he spoke, we time traveled; the memories and images fused.

Like many of my elders, 爺爺 spoke in repetition. He was conveying to me what he wanted me to know, to remember. That day I learned he attempted his swim twice. The first time he was caught. Yet even after he faced the unforgiving consequences of escape, he tried again. I knew I needed to write this story in two parts to honor the second attempt.

we were promised work in the restaurants

i clawed brown earth before collapsing.

fishermen took pity & reeled us on gasoline tanks

five bowls of rice in hong kong, my sweetest meal.

i clawed brown earth before collapsing

villagers found us gasping, fish out of water

five bowls of rice in hong kong, my sweetest meal.

memories escape me now.

villagers found us gasping, fish out of water.

my thoughts enter one ear & leave the other.

memories escape me now.

you being here helps me remember.

my thoughts enter one ear & leave the other.

water lilies & crickets, our last witness.

you being here helps me remember

we wore watermelon husks to hide.

—From “how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)”

As 爺爺 shared, I saw the watermelon husks—my eyes widened—when he explained how they hollowed them to appear like floating fruit, lost cargo in the waters. This, he told me, was how they would evade the snipers, soldiers who stood guard to shoot any dissenter who dared try to leave. He had determined the chance of survival as 80%, a number he heard from across the waters. The surety. This is what it took. To have that faith to tread for miles in the dark.

I never sat down with 爺爺 to record his story. The times I tried to, my Zoom H5 propped on the tray table between us, he didn’t want to share. His rightful hesitance is why I turn to poetry: writing is an act that can capture a lived moment, when there is trust that exists between the storyteller and the writer. With my own elders and community members, I have found there is a lot more trust in seeing written documentation as opposed to recording equipment. There is less performance and unease that way, less threat. For a people who have been impacted by decades of state surveillance and persecution, that is an especially important consideration.

There is a certain shame that lives inside my 爺爺’s story. 冇講啦, he would say, mo gong la. There’s nothing more to say. What I saw as an act of immense courage and bravery, he saw as one to tiptoe over, perhaps for fear of judgment, or due to the lingering weight of persecution. There was little pride. That is why I chose to tell his story. This act of telling also makes our intergenerational survival more part of me than the silence. In his telling, he granted me the story. In the tacit permission, I wrote our history.

My grandfather became an ancestor in 2021. When he was hospitalized during the pandemic, I got to show him the pantoums I wrote. By then, one of them was slated to be published in Best New Poets. He was strapped to breathing tubes and couldn’t speak at the time. I don’t know if he was proud. He transitioned a few months later, alone, in a nursing home we weren’t allowed to enter for fear of contagion.

There is a third pantoum I have not completed. It is a draft that lives in the archives of my marble notebooks. The third pantoum speaks of memory—how later, as 爺爺’s Parkinson’s worsened, he recanted some facts he had shared. The weight of his deteriorating memory, losing him, and knowing his last moments were alone, is a deep grief I am still processing.

Not all poems are meant to be completed. Not all poems are meant to be shared. But through writing, we can break generational inheritances of shame and silence around how we survived. We are not the shame we inherit. May we be the clear channels for the stories of our living, our dead, and our dying. May our writing be the means through which we also know truth in the lives we live and get to live. For life itself is precious.

“Not Too Hard to Master” is a series of poets writing on form and sharing a prompt.

River 瑩瑩 Dandelion (he, him, keoi / 佢) is a poet, educator, and healing arts practitioner. He is the author of remembering (y)our light (Dandelion Books, 2023). He received a 2024 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers from Lambda Literary and the 2022 AWP Kurt Brown Prize. He was also a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.

Dandelion earned ...

Read Full Biography

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Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

you had to know the currents, & the sun

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.

you had to believe you…

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

we wore watermelon husks to hide

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

water lilies & crickets our last…

Article

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On translating oral history into poetry.

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

you had to know the currents, & the sun

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.

you had to believe you…

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

we wore watermelon husks to hide

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

water lilies & crickets our last…

Article

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On translating oral history into poetry.

Glossary Terms

Pantoum

A Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1690449/how-pantoums-can-tell-intergenerational-stories at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

Prose from Poetry Magazine

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

On translating oral history into poetry.

BY River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

Originally Published: July 01, 2025

What is an untold or undertold story in your family, biological or chosen, that haunts you or holds significant weight? This can be a story of a grandparent, a distant ancestor, a close friend. It can be a rumor, or a whispered, verified truth passed down across generations. Begin by brainstorming phrases and specific images you’ve heard associated with this story. Then, craft your pantoum using these lines.

When translating oral history into poetry, it is important to consider a few key questions about your position as the writer in relation to the person you are speaking with:

1. Who am I in relation to the speaker? Reflect on the relationship and dynamics present.

2. What is the story I want to tell? Why?

3. How can I tell the story in a way that centers and honors the speaker’s life?

Here is a template of the form to practice. You can add or omit stanzas as you like:

Line 1:

Line 2:

Line 3:

Line 4:

Line 2:

Line 5:

Line 4:

Line 6:

Line 5:

Line 7:

Line 6:

Line 8:

Line 7:

Line 3:

Line 8:

Line 1:

“Not Too Hard to Master” is a series of poets writing on form and sharing a prompt. Read River 瑩瑩 Dandelion’s essay on the pantoum.

River 瑩瑩 Dandelion (he, him, keoi / 佢) is a poet, educator, and healing arts practitioner. He is the author of remembering (y)our light (Dandelion Books, 2023). He received a 2024 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers from Lambda Literary and the 2022 AWP Kurt Brown Prize. He was also a finalist for a 2023 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.

Dandelion earned ...

Read Full Biography

Previous In Issue Next In Issue

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

you had to know the currents, & the sun

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.

you had to believe you…

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

we wore watermelon husks to hide

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

water lilies & crickets our last…

Article

How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On memory, oral history, and honoring elders.

Glossary Terms

Pantoum

A Malaysian verse form in quatrains with an intricate repeating pattern.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/articles/1690453/writing-prompt at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

In 1973, my grandfather made a five-mile swim from Shenzhen Bay to Hong Kong, across shark-filled waters guarded by the People’s Liberation Army. He was part of an exodus of hundreds of thousands who fled from Guangdong as refugees of the Cultural Revolution.

you had to know the currents, & the sun

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.

you had to believe you could do it

& not be afraid to die.

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters

dream of banyan roots aglow

i was not afraid of dying

even as tides surged my blued lips.

i dreamed of banyan roots aglow

when pistol shots scraped shoreline

tides surged my blued lips

toisan frog treading to freedom.

when pistol shots scraped shoreline

i cried out for my hing dai

toisan frogs treading to freedom

trachea inflamed, violet balloon.

i cried out for my hing dai

when searchlights flooded our vision

tracheas inflamed, violet balloons

liberation army cuffed us home soon.

when searchlights flooded our vision

i pretended the sun was rising

liberation army cuffed us home soon.

record that in this pantoum.

i pretended the sun was rising

when rocks scraped scalps & wood splintered knees

record that in this pantoum

i waited for the scars, & returned.

rock-scraped scalp & wood-splintered knees

bandaged in 嬤嬤’s scolds, congee, & lotus root

i waited for the scars, & returned

new hing dai came searching for a guide.

bandaged in 嬤嬤’s scolds, congee, & lotus root

i trained laps in the bay each nightfall

new hing dai came searching for a guide

water lilies & crickets, our witness.

we trained laps in the bay each nightfall

i had to believe we could make it

water lilies & crickets, my witness

this time, i knew the currents & the sun.

Notes:

爺爺 — yeh yeh, Cantonese for paternal grandfather

hing dai — 兄弟, Cantonese for brother or close friend

嬤嬤 — mah mah, Cantonese for paternal grandmother

“how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)” was first published in Best New Poets 2021.

Read River 瑩瑩 Dandelion’s essay on the pantoum and his writing prompt.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

we wore watermelon husks to hide

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

water lilies & crickets our last…

Article

How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On memory, oral history, and honoring elders.

Article

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On translating oral history into poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690457/how-we-survived-ye-ye-s-pantoum-i at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

RIVER 瑩瑩 DANDELION | JUL 7, 2025, 7:24 PM EDT | VIEW ON WEBSITE

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

for 爺爺, in memoriam

we wore watermelon husks to hide

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

water lilies & crickets our last witness

we departed the cattailed creek one final time.

lost cargo floating east to hong kong

new hing dai treaded water, compasses toward freedom

we departed the cattailed creek one final time

white sharks awaited our legs in the depths.

new hing dai treaded water, compasses toward freedom

they said we had an 80% chance of making it

white sharks awaited our legs in the depths

breath + breath × wanting =

death

an 80% chance of making it

letters sent back announced survival.

breath + breath × wanting

death

banked on generations of dreaming

letters sent back announced survival.

we were promised work in the restaurants

banked on generations of dreaming

fishermen took pity & reeled us on gasoline tanks.

we were promised work in the restaurants

i clawed brown earth before collapsing.

fishermen took pity & reeled us on gasoline tanks

five bowls of rice in hong kong, my sweetest meal.

i clawed brown earth before collapsing

villagers found us gasping, fish out of water

five bowls of rice in hong kong, my sweetest meal.

memories escape me now.

villagers found us gasping, fish out of water.

my thoughts enter one ear & leave the other.

memories escape me now.

you being here helps me remember.

my thoughts enter one ear & leave the other.

water lilies & crickets, our last witness.

you being here helps me remember

we wore watermelon husks to hide.

Notes:

爺爺 — yeh yeh, Cantonese for paternal grandfather

hing dai — 兄弟, Cantonese for brother or close friend

“how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)” was first published in The Shade Journal, 2021.

Read River 瑩瑩 Dandelion’s essay on the pantoum and his writing prompt.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2025)

Poem

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

you had to know the currents, & the sun

stay shallow to keep warm in the waters.

you had to believe you…

Article

How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On memory, oral history, and honoring elders.

Article

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

By River 瑩瑩 Dandelion

On translating oral history into poetry.

This article was downloaded from https://poetryfoundation.com/poetrymagazine/poems/1690459/how-we-survived-ye-ye-s-pantoum-ii at Jul 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM EDT.

Table of Contents

Poetry: July/August 2025

POEMS

Editor’s Note, July/August 2025

Beach

Diary

Hereafter

The Call

How to Love Your Mother at 98

Throwing Them Away

탈춤

Dance of Masks

성락

Music for Voice

On Translating Kim Ok

They/Them

Dear Time,

Plaster [“A shallow depth of field produces flames”]

Plaster [“We paint all these rooms white”]

Plaster [“How a barn owl is never just a single barn owl”]

Plaster [“At another work site In a sister borough”]

Plaster [“In this song a drum takes itself apart]

The Muse of Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Grave-Digging

The Weeds (Accidentally on Purpose)

Heaven

Evel Knievel Returns to Snake River Canyon

Operation 2020

Language Studies: ‘Ahooyawpe’ / From the Air

Підземний пляж

The Underground Beach

Бомбосховище

The Bomb Shelter

On Translating Dmitry Blizniuk

The

Silicon Valley, in the Backseat of a Tesla

Night Class

broken lyre

i am the machine and i work

Thinking of It

Small Talk

Shiftless

Brunch Shift

Age at the Beginning of Knowing

Upon Receiving the Gift of a Handmade Box

WIND CROSSING GRASSES: POEMS FROM CHINA’S DRAGON RIVERS

Wind Crossing Grasses: Poems from China’s Dragon Rivers

时间开花了

Time Is Blossoming

天涯海角

At the End of the Earth

雪

Snow

我们如此确信自己的灵魂

We Believe in Our Soul

石头记

The Story of a Stone

老虎与羚羊

Tiger and Gazelle

光辉的一天

A Glorious Day

叮嘱

Please

三匹马在河边饮水

Three Horses Drink Water at the Riverbank

故乡的距离

The Distance of My Home

山谷

Valley

大河流淌

The Big Running River

阿拉善右旗走笔—曼德拉山脉岩画

From “Rock Paintings in Alxa”

圪料街

Geliao Street

曼德拉岩画记

Rock Painting on the Mandela

NOT TOO HARD TO MASTER

How Pantoums Can Tell Intergenerational Stories

Writing Prompt: Pantoum

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (i)

how we survived: 爺爺’s pantoum (ii)