by Anna Yin
The Map Home
Around the globe, you search
for two dots, connected
by a flight line. Distance
becomes a long string
to knot nostalgia;
Fingers nudge a blue
sphere – home beckons
like an aching moon.
Your son asks
to map the family tree.
You surprise him, draw
concentric circles. Your pen drifts,
traces solar systems,
that revolve around the same point —
That’s our home!
Laughing at your crazy map,
your son prunes the growing tree.
He does not see
rings rippling across
your night river,
and leaves fall to roots.
“The Map Home” won May Poetry Challenge 2010
Visiting “The Warrior Emperor & China’s Terracotta Army”
Your horses are ready.
Your army is waiting.
Your gardens and palaces are preserved…
but all flesh has long decayed,
skulls, bones faded to become
the lifeless evidence.
After all, the underworld does not
intersect with the living world.
Your wish failed to survive
your fifth immortal tour;
now your underworld, mute,
lies exposed.
Those weary wars, bleeding
flags, shattering chariots
and spreading fires
re-play in my imagination…
I wish I could believe in your reincarnation:
I could be one of your women.
I could be one of your soldiers.
I could be one of your ancestors.
I could be one of your offspring…
But you are gone,
no matter how bitter or grand
your history becomes.
Along the long river,
only the currents wash by.
I inhale the silence.
A Chinese Nightingale
From this window,
it is a patch of sky, up high, a cloud floating.
Beneath its shadow, poplar trees
stand tall in rows; leaves already fallen,
thin branches frame tiny lattices.
Inside: cold like an abandoned well,
deep, moldy. Winds blow in
and dangle empty webs.
By the window,
the bird sings his only song,
his voice drained as rustling leaves.
I approach, palms baited with
golden grains.
Come, take some.
I coo.
He turns.
I catch my own shadow,
too heavy to lift.
From “Wings Toward Sunlight” (Mosaic Press 2011)
Notes on Author’s Work:
As well as these three poems, more of Anna Yin’s poetry can be found in the March 2013 issue of Eastlit.
