Poems

The One Hundred Years of Solitude of Chinese Poetry

About your poetry –
I'm guessing it adapts to the environment
better than you do.
It's avoided the problem of inheritance.

Digesting its food, it's like swaying corn,
asleep, it's like a pregnant wild dog.
Out for a stroll, it's a stream flowing
past the plaque-like railroad bridge.

It fires language
because language takes work too seriously.
It slaps the customer. It pulls off
The condom of prosody. It reveals impossibility.

It's like a wooden spoon in a non-stick pan
commanding the peas' undeclared war.
These peas are round and plump
but still aren't words.

About the relationship between you and me,
your poetry is an unrented house.
Right now the scene is so empty
it's like a ring picked out somewhere else.

Along the wall, at least it brings out sponge gourds
like those I bought at the morning market, fresh and tender,
clever enough for erotic stories.
It is the life inside of life.

It's astonished by the number of times you've returned.
I try my best not to ask where you've been.
This poem is yours.
Yes, for a moment, it almost seemed not your writing.