Ye Chun


Koan: What endures?


After the Atlanta spa shootings


They were killed
and the killers are still out there
with their guns, theories and impulse to pounce.
What endures? I don’t know.  
What happens to the soul? The body branded
“illegal” in this land
was not allowed to cross the ocean
to reach her village graveyard—
this lone daughter who WeChatted money home.
And that mother two days
short of her fiftieth birthday.
And that grandmother who walked by a duck creek
as willow veined the dusk—
almost peaceful if one dares to feel so.
“I’m so tired of the news,” a white person said,
and I, too, could wrap tiredness
around my body—
small, brittle, from fearful to forgetful,
as the day turns away from the sun
and we turn toward darkness,
the breath still held.

Koan: What have you brought here?

A gaining mind that could use a losing.

A past—I walked here on a leash—
that hasn’t been trained to sit.

My face, my accent,
horizons in and out of sight—

will all settle like mud in water?

Fear of being shot
after six Asian women were shot

because the shooter “had a bad day.”

Bad days after wakeful nights—

I almost learned how to fall asleep again
nodding off so often during the overnight retreat,

the morning bell like a pistol shot.

Fear of being shouted at
or shouting back,

because I’m not empty-minded like you

or equipped with years of therapy.
Long notes in my throat, dashes in my forehead,

scars starved for love—

do I inhale to ease them,
exhale to erase them?

My eyes are here too, where
the row of ash turn gold before letting go.

Also by Ye Chun: "Child," "Pine," "Winter Birth"
Translations of Ling Yue: "We Spend Winter in a Silent Room," "The Cloudy Sky Stares at Me"
In the store: broadside triptych
Interview: a conversation with Ye Chun on Lantern Puzzle

 

Ye Chun has published two books of poetry, Travel Over Water (Bitter Oleander Press, 2005) and Lantern Puzzle (Tupelo Press, 2014), which won the Berkshire Prize. Her novel, Straw Dogs of the Universe (Catapult, 2023), received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her story collection, Hao (Catapult, 2021), also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, was named a Lit Hub’s Best Book of the Year. She has also published a novel in Chinese and four volumes of poetry translations. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, she teaches at Providence College and lives in Providence, Rhode Island. 

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