Changming Yuan : 5 poems

[y]

          yes, yes, with your
yellowish skin, you enjoy
       meditating within the shape of
a wishbone, inside the broken wing
           of an oriental bird strayed, or
in a larger sense, you look like
    the surfacing tail of a pacific whale
           who yells low, but whose voice reaches afar
far beyond a whole continent, to a remote village
    near the yellow river, where you used to sunbathe
           rice stems, reed leaves, cotton skeletons
with a fork made of a single horn-shaped twig
          when you were a barefooted country boy
                   on the other side of this new world

is this the reason for your obsession
          with the letter?


[3]

first rotated
then curved
before they were finally connected
the same three old horizontal lines
fenced together for the climax
of the holy, the human, the hopeful
as with the trinity
for the three gems
during wudhu
to stand in as many red words
or forms of matter
since in a race anybody, anything
beyond this smallest prime number
is nobody, nothing. That's why the lines
still remain parallel in roman and chinese civilizations:
one is almost dead, vertically
the other still very much alive, horizontally

[hunting]

more courageous
than an animal hunter
trying to kill an innocent dear
one hundred yards away, or even farther
with a powerful rifle, you hide yourself
waiting still under a thorny bush
for an entire sullen summer afternoon, just
to shoot a fleeting thought, like a jaguar
with the camera propped up behind your mind
its shutter no bigger than your pen tip

[seasonal stanzas]

February

Rolling, flowing, dripping
From the palest memories of last year
The melting snow stops moving
But hung everywhere
Like crystals
Against the freezing fits of frantic winds
With the moon always broken
In this shortest month of the pearl
No love can be purified
No couple can enjoy a full honeymoon

March 

At this true, truer outset of the year
When the world finally awakens
From its prolonged white hibernation
When we can march forward like soldiers
With the steadiest steps
Every life can now
Give a morning kiss
To earth, to the landscape
Without mask or cosmetics

April 

All plants beginning to burgeon
Open their hands and hearts widely
To draw inspirations
From the season
To play with spring spirits
While the ghosts of those doomed to die
Within the year are stalking behind us
Some to the church
Some to the mind
Others to the corners of night

[natural confrontations]

Cuckoo

With a thin
Blood-throated voice
You call out aloud
Trying to wake up
Millions of millions
f trees and rocks
All deeply lost in
Their cold dreams
Of last winter

Orchid

Deep in the valley
Alone on a shady spot
You bloom aloud, though
There are neither eyes
Nor ears open nearby
Paying the slightest attention
To your shape or melody
Be it ever so fragrant
So fulfilling

Eddy 

A gossamer-like breeze
Left far behind
By a running dog
Tries to strike
The stagnated twilight
Hanging above the whole city
Before the storm sets in

Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Allen Qing Yuan, holds a PhD in English and works as a private tutor in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific. Poetry submissions welcome at yuans@shaw.ca. 

Yuan's poetry appears in 659 literary publications across 25 countries, including Asia Literary Review, Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, LiNQ, London Magazine, Poetry Kanto, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg, SAND, Taj Mahal Review and Two Thirds North. 

Poems by changming yuan

[pursuing]l

 

Here is the persistent pursuit of a bone chip

Hung right above the nose of the ravenous

Dog as it runs amuck, as well as another

 

Pursuit of an exotic seed by the west wind

That keeps blowing to catch, to throw it

Into the voiceless reality, and another pursuit

 

Of an innocent deer trying to gain an inch

Of freedom from the claws of an African lion

Or the pursuit of the sun by the legendary Kuafu

 

Who ran all the way along the Yellow River

To the very edge of the world, for a reason

No one has ever been able to tell, even today

 

And here’s another pursuit of a thin whim

shuttling around like a crazy owl in the jungle

A pursuit of a shapeless cloud in a forgotten sky

 

And another pursuit of quasi happiness you yearn to

Embed into the frame of a painting like Munch’s Scream

The pursuit that can be transmitted onto a colored screen

 

Like yin always trying to join yang, or vice versa

In a parallel universe, the pursuit of metaphors

Behind the thought, now more persistent than ever

 

 

[y!]

 

You are really haunted by this letter

Yes, since it contains all the secrets of

Your selfhood: your name begins with it

You carry y-chromosome; you wear

Y-pants; both your skin and heart are

Yellowish; your best poem is titled

Y; you seldom seek the balance between

Yin and yang; you never want to be a

Yankee, but you yearn to remain as

Young as your poet son; in particular

You love the way it is pronounced, so

Youthfully, as a word rather than a letter to

Yell out the human reasons; above all

Your soul is a seed blown from afar, always

Y-shaped when breaking the earth to greet spring

 

[white]

 

from among thick clouds

like mountains of inflated cotton

high above spring fog, much

lighter than the snow of last year

a biblical dove flies, soaring around

as if unable to find a place

to perch on land, where reed flowers

grow tall in the fields of salt, where

ivories float around

in rivers of milk

 

while no pale surface is taking in any light

all colors gather into a blank filled with flour

slaked lime, or aging hair just to reflect

the entire human civilization

 

[viewpoint]

 

no, no, no

no more do i want to be

a chinaman, brown-visioned

with all my yellowish

outlooks, yellowish sentiments

 

nor do I intend to be

a red-skinned big-foot

with my ancestors' vast land

all occupied by foreign devils

 

nor a rising black star

with evil pale-faced memories

nor a big white boss

with all his politically correct dollars

 

rather, I prefer to be a tiny rock

sitting still at a hilltop, on the roadside

watching, observing, or even

whistling when there is a wind blowing hard

Seasonal Stanzas

 

Summer:​in her beehive-like room

​so small that a yawning stretch

​would readily awaken

the whole apartment building

​she draws a picture on the wall

​of a tremendous tree

​that keeps growing

​until it shoots up

​from the cemented roof

 

Autumn: ​not unlike a giddy goat

​wandering among the ruins

​of a long lost civilization

​you keep searching

​in the central park

​a way out of the tall weeds

​as nature makes new york

​into a mummy blue

 

Winter: ​after the storm

​all dust hung up

​in the crowded air

​with his human face

​frozen into a dot of dust

​and a rising speckle of dust

​melted into his face

​to avoid this cold climate

​of his antarctic dream

​he relocated his naked soul

​at the dawn of summer

 

Spring:​like a raindrop

​on a small lotus leaf

​unable to find the spot

​to settle itself down

​in an early autumn shower

​my little canoe drifts around

near the horizon

​beyond the bare bay

 

Changming Yuan, 4-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (Leaf Garden Press, 2009) and Landscaping (Flutter Press, 2013), teaches independently in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan (Poetry submissions welcome at editors.pp@gmail.com). Recently interviewed by PANK, Yuan has poetry appear in 709 journals/anthologies across 27 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, London Magazine and Threepenny Review.