you won’t write what’s recorded in written history? and you believe you’ll only focus on things completely forgotten?   yeh, I suppose a thread of sun, hang ing on an eyelash   a word that came out of a rice-filled mouth   all the drops of rain that rushed into the ear in that, forgotten, instant   everything born the second they die   Ouyang Yu writes in English and Chinese and to date has published 100 books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, literary criticism and literary translation in both languages. His website is www.otherlandpublishing.com.

What is home? Forty years of morning, noon, and night. Tell me about your childhood. Thirty-seven mouths open under a tin roof.   What is happiness? Eighteen in my sailor suit, spray from the waterfall—   Why did you marry? Five years of coins.   How many tears? One thousand, eight hundred, and ninety-eight pearls.   Do you love your mother? Two hands, ten fingers, six children.   How many miles have you come? Sixty-four thousand and twenty-five gull-wings.   Do you love me? The rain falling, falling, over thirteen thousand dawns.     Eileen Chong is the author of […]

Eight wild wood ducks
greet me at the gate,
follow me down to the feed-room, wait
while I get them a handful of seed

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Because breath is only childhood cowering in              the belly of the hospital the sound of his footsteps on the gravel outside my bedroom window              approaching the cages and the endless thirst in me, seizing my body and rupturing the bones.               I blindly swallowed the days the way a dog will run until it is lost and I was never here the medication, closer to nothingness than ever being well. myself, a stranger offering a space              […]

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