He Xiang
I Invite You to See You Are Already Living in the Future
It was never about flying cars with
you. When you could visit kin and every
kang in every flat-roofed room was a time
machine slipping back to the Warring States –
you wanted the snap of the breezily
modern, its arrival neatly announced.
Some defined point, a beckoning, slowing
down, something, though days vanquish only each
other, lies vanquish hardly themselves. I
stood on a stool, out on the balcony,
the walnut trees in the next yard again
green, young. I stood and stood. Now, I am grown.
Years slip like double-entry bookkeeping:
to turn the page, first, reconcile our debts.
He Xiang lived in Beijing as a child. This poem is part of a chapbook manuscript entitled "Emperor Penguins on the Square," which reflects on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests on the occasion of their thirtieth anniversary. Other poems from this series have appeared or are forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, the Georgia Review, The Rumpus, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner, where they received the Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Poetry Award.