Yun Wang's second poetry book, The Book of Totality, was published by Salmon Poetry in March 2014. Her first poetry book, titled The Book of Jade, won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize from Story Line Press and was published in 2002. Yun Wang's poetry chapbook, titled The Carp, was published by Bull Thistle Press in 1994. She has published poems in numerous literary journals, including the Kenyon Review, Cimarron Review, Green Mountains Review, International Quarterly, Poet Lore, Boxcar Poetry Review, and many others. Yun Wang's translations of classical Chinese poetry have been published in Willow Spring, Poetry Canada Review, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. Yun Wang is a Senior Research Scientist at California Institute of Technology, and a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma. Her research field is cosmology.---------
A Map of the Universe
A great wall of galaxies spans billions of light years. A woman searches
for planets around other stars. A man flies an airplane into a skyscraper.
Dark bushes of matter expand
branch off, clump to ignite
star clusters: roses bloom
into an empty universe.
Brain waves from billions flood a tiny planet. Chubby teens surf the web
for forbidden games. Skeletal toddlers whimper in fly-infested mud huts.
Naked man and woman twine.
Tinkling pull of dark petals
shapes dreams. Stars hum
from the black rose in the sky.