7. Olympia, Washington

The Pacific Ocean shovels coals in the distance.
My drunk friends drop pebbles at me as I lie
on the couch losing water. Be happy, be happy, be happy.
I’m trying to see spring sprout, mountain that smells like green apple,
grass younger than me, to see the pink sweater
I wore when the sun sprinkled pink dust and I practiced
xiang gong to make my body fragrant,
not the speeding lines of the steel tunnel,
a hand gridding its fingers on my ribs.
I’m trying to breathe, to reach water or an address.

In the white house

with white windows

who spends the night?

The dead say: don’t

talk so loud

I can hear you

even before the words are said

In the woods

there is a bird

whose feathers

have every color

in the world

You’ve seen it

You’ve gathered

every name of it

in your throat

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5. Lhasa

Seeds tier in a pomegranate.
Sweat beads convex-mirror corners of a night.
You pick up a piece of coal from roadside,
wrap it in a blue and green checked handkerchief
and give it to me: What makes you feel warm?
In the Himalayas, a snow leopard
spins gold in early morning. I tie a prayer flag
to a balloon and let go. Its little feet step through clouds
and rain falls on the white stupas, the hind-scalps
of prostrating pilgrims who say: om mani padme hum, om
mani padme hum, om mani padme hum…

Buddhakapala

(Skullcup of Buddha)

presides over

twenty-five deities

two hands

holding his consort

(Citrasena)

four hands

his skullcup

chopper

ceremonial staff

and drum

In the dancer’s pose

(ardhaparyanka)

he stands on a corpse

supported by a lotus

Ye Chun’s “MAP”, continued…

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4. Shenzhen

Streetlamps imitate stars.
Stains on a hotel ceiling imitate mountains, boats and ruins.
…either do great good or great evil,
the journalist, 23, says. We walk
along the low brick wall into a park. A palm tree
stops us and deepens the ocher of our faces.
A stone bridge shapes an ellipse with its shadow. We
don’t have much to do so we press each other’s body.
Is a compass a moon bringing a finger to its lips?

A mosquito net

with a crimson mosquito

A roach crawls beneath the net

onto her right leg

My leg feels odd

she says

It’s broken

her algebra teacher says

It’s broken

her chief-editor says

It’s broken

the legless beggar says

It’s broken

the manager of Human Resources says

It’s broken

her snoring lover says

On the wall a map

of cherries and water paths

Ye Chun’s “MAP”, continued…

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3. Zhongzhou, Luoyang

This area is between brown and purple.
All the apartment buildings look the same.
I need to lie down, call out
your name to one of the black-barred
windows. In the most crowded market,
my classmate is selling embroidered pillowcases and lingerie.
If you appear, I’ll make you look at me balancing
the sick little invisible animal
on my head. I love the sweet numbness of dusk—
we glow before vanishing.

 
 
Lay out the grid

of roads and wards:

Align the northern part

of the western wall

the middle stretch

of the eastern wall

and a road that comes

in Gate VII

turns west

and heads south

nearly reaching

the course of the Luo

Align the other roads

the southern part

of the western wall

most of the northern stretch

and the surviving part

at the southern end

of the eastern wall

Ye Chun’s “MAP”, continued…

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1.Niujie, Beijing

When the earth shakes, hunching grandma
picks me up, cousin’s uneven leg shadow-puppets
the window. The sky lowers like father’s raincoat
till the old lady carried out by her son
drums on his head: Let me die at home, let me die.
We live in a tent, eat government bread
and play on a monkey-hill. The world stays
a cotton ball in big sister’s bleeding nose.
Worms swim in my belly, warm air rubs my soles.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Elizabeth Schoyer, Napoleon’s Collection, 2005
Oil on canvas and mixed media

“The image of spider web and cocoons in ‘Niujie, Bejing’ came
from Napoleon’s Collection, painted by Elizabeth Schoyer, whom
I studied with at the University of Virginia. In fact, the poem
sequence grew out of an art exercise for her class. For the exercise,
we made a map of the place we grew up. In the sequence, each
poem is a place and consists of two stanzas — the one on the left
pockets traces of experience; the one on the right serves as sort of
notes on the experience. Together they work like lines of latitude
and longitude to locate the experience.”-Ye Chun
               

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Draw a spider web

with small cocoons

Draw one cocoon

of hymenoptera

one of polyp

of cynodont

one with a man inside

the man with a bird

in his belly

(its singing is its gyration)

with a bomb in his head

(its ticking its nutrition)
 
 
Ye Chun’s “MAP”, continued…

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