Jeffrey Yang is the author of the poetry books An Aquarium and the forthcoming Vanishing-Line. He is the translator of Su Shi’s East Slope and a collection of classical Chinese poems called Rhythm 226. Yang is also the co-editor (with Natasha Wimmer) of Two Lines: Some Kind of Beautiful Signal, and the editor of Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems from New Directions. He is currently working on a translation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s June Fourth Elegies.
Photograph by Nina Subin.
Eels are slimy creatures.
But never lie. If they sense
the slightest pretence, they’ll
bite off your finger. Carefully
study the hands of politicians.
Abalone Rumsen aulón
Aristotle auriform Costanoans
cultivated, Brueghel painted,
awabi Osahi dove for
on September 12, 425 A.D.