Siyun Fang
I suspect there is a middle-aged scholar in exile
living in my body
He takes a boat during the night, confronting the cliffs on both sides of the river
using a double handful of moonlight and river to wash his body
He rides across states and places in the day, getting drunk
Finally, he scuttles the boat, selling his horse to obtain a cassock
also sharing my father’s grayed-hair with me
He is a prisoner captured in my bones during the day
He is reading the Bible in my blood at night
—Sometimes I even suspect all my poems
are just the echo
of him ruining his manuscripts, throwing them into the stove
***
Siyun Fang is a poet and translator. A graduate of Centre College and New York University, she is going to attend The New School MFA Program this coming fall. Her research interests include the modern and contemporary poetry, poetic theories, theories of narrative, American fiction, as well as dramatic arts.