Ye Chun


Winter Baby

Soon enough, everywhere you turn your eyes: forsythia, magnolia.
Cherry, part-blossom, part-leaves.
                                                          Maple umbels, then winged seeds.
Yellow-green to green-green, pink to plum.

I’m not looking forward to it yet—the world proving its fertility,
that begins with the primordial egg, as the story goes,
baby Pan Gu breaking the shell with his first stretch.

Those slow months of awe and weariness in Arlington’s one-bedroom apartment.
I’d put her in the sling after the frost,
                                                            let her lopsided head rest beneath my chin—
her head, I thought, could be the earth condensed,
holding all it holds,
                                knowing what I don’t know.
We’d drift windward, past suburban houses and their lawns,
                                                                                                    into the cemetery,
the nearest park-like place, but quieter,
with dogwood, angels, and serene faces in the stones.
A few were Asian. One looked like my mother half an earth away,
eyes untethered for a moment from thought,
lips tilting to hint a smile—
                                            as I do now, sometimes, for photos.  

Today’s sky, a hushed dome, not unlike congealed egg white.
The neighbor’s three burning bushes across the driveway, done burning,
stand bare, slender, their arms linked,
                                                               as if to keep one another from scattering.

Also by Ye Chun: "Child," "Pine," "Winter Birth," "Koan: What endures?," "Koan: What have you brought here?"
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 and Lantern Puzzle, which won the Berkshire Prize. Her novel Straw Dogs of the Universe and story collection, Hao, were both longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. She is also the author of a novel in Chinese and four volumes of poetry translations, including Ripened Wheat: Selected Poems of Hai Zi, shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pushcart Prize Anthology, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Poetry International, Four Way Review, Nimrod, and elsewhere. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, she teaches at Providence College and lives in Providence, Rhode Island. 

ISSN 2472-338X
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