Changming Yuan, Winter 2017

The Irony of a Snag
Changming Yuan

1.
You have long since died
But you will never fall

Standing deadly among leafy growths
Your body embodies a rebirth
Greening close to your rotten cycles

2.
No one cares how you got
Into the waterway
But you keep trying to return
To the ocean, where all life

Originates, where your skeleton
Poses a navigation hazard
To any boat heading towards a port

Changming Yuan, nine-time Pushcart nominee and author of seven chapbooks, started to learn English at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before moving out of China. Currently, Changming edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan in Vancouver, and has poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, and Threepenny Review, among many others.

(“Haunted,” Image by Dylan Silver)