Changming Yuan, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China, holds a PhD in English, and currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. Recently interviewed by [PANK] and World Poetry [CFRO100.5FM], Yuan's poetry has appeared in Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry (2009;12), BestNewPoemsOnline, LiNQ, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 819 other publications across 28 countries. ---------
Word Journey
While hiking in the wild
I found a foreign word
Lying on the yin side
Of a slope as night began
To fall, I picked it up
Trying to use it to light
My way ahead, but the word
Did not burn, nor did it give
Any smell. Then I chewed it
Like a condensed energy candy
But it was tasteless and too hard
So I put it against my chest
And let it resonate with my heartbeat
When a fresh sun hops aloud
High above my darkened dream
I finally coughed it out with blood
Never knowing it
To be a noun or verb
Or
Philosophy, among myriads of
Constructs in metaphysics
Objects in nature, or
Phenomena in history
Is, according to old Hegel
Like the god in the temple
Like the killing field
Like flowers and fruit
Like Minerva’s owl
Like digestion
Like physiography, the same one motto, or
Like the animals listening to music, which may
Become real when expressing itself
Or expressed through the rational alone
More exactly, like a drop of summer rain
The yin seeking balance with the yang
Within a pumpkin, the words squeezed
Out of your ball pen, the emptiness in
A meditating mind, and that is all
There is, or there is not to it
Another Afterlife
Like a goat fleeing from the zoo
My trueself wandered afar
Into the heart of darkness, where
I saw Milton’s Satan struggling
With agonies, while swarms of spirits
Trembling amid a black fire
Following Dante’s steps, I tried to
Find Yuan Wang, the supreme ruler
Of the underworld, hoping to
Exchange my soul
For his little brushpen
(he uses to keep his registry book
Much like Dr. Faust selling his
For worldly knowledge
My majesty, I began to negotiate
But there is no registry here
The king said, just suffering subjects.
Meanwhile, others are also trying to
Greet him in an endless queue
Here I find no classes
No sexes, no age or racial differences
Except human souls drifting into
A huge alchemic furnace, where
They are boiled with conceptions
Until we all evaporate above the ground
Like mists, on a sunny summer morning
This is neither escape nor astray