XING YA

FIVE POEMS

translated by Tiantian Yuan and Jennifer Fossenbell

Sparrowology

I wake up with a sparrow  white thunderbolts hang from our breastbones
its video games
its beak pasted shut with Song Dynasty paper lanterns  its thin compact skeleton
rises into the ruins on the notebook’s margin     yet the sparrow of superconductivity physics  the sparrow of the Platform Sutra
sees the米-shaped lines as the extension of tree branches
what extends from words will ultimately be overruled  one by one 
by the sparrow’s swollen culture-toes
the sparrow takes my place sitting upright on the lines of the pages  chanting harebrained human words 
the sparrow of convex optimization 
the sparrow of the Bayesian statistical model for calibrating the carbon-14 dating of a tree-ring sample series  from its singular  punctuation-marked skull 
passes to me its animal intent to kill

Blind Trinema*

three weeks into the semester we talked about the eyes of trinema
on the poker cards they were wiped out by known patterns     trinema became blind
and were given shape
oh     what a beautiful trinema needs is to thin down its legs with matchsticks
to feed on flames     to regurgitate the insubstantiality from its stomach 
or it could stand in for a poker card
take the fall for it     the lost eyes of trinema are impossible to retrieve
just then     my deskmate played the black joker     it was covered with protozoa traps
what could I play to rival it
our desk suddenly started to overflow with trinema
one after another
one carrying another’s dead bright eyes

*Trinema refers to a genus of protozoa, an amoebae-like single-celled organism with three leg-like pseudopods

Outrunning the Two-Legged Beasts

days ago I saw the two-legged beasts
so I looked into the mirror     and found I have to put my hands on the ground     to prove that I am four-legged
not related to them at all
the fact that I am four-legged is essential 
is the key to distinguishing myself from the two-legged beast
had I the power of metamorphosis
I would choose to walk without so many legs
better to crawl     or to fly     better some other way that even the two-legged beasts haven’t thought of
to roll my legs up and stuff them into letter-shaped candles     legs that cut off the restless notes
of a rock music CD
and fall into the fancy of formalists 
legs that presume to be enshrined as sacred vessels on ancient altars
even to become civilization itself
but these futile legs  from the source of the two-legged beast
burn  like incense cones  the ash on the tip of its nose
I dash off
and though my body staggers unnaturally
I leave all the two-legged beasts who try to catch me far behind

January 23

after kissing a woman  I felt ashamed for days
only later did it occur to me that she could be in love with me
we actually got together on the third night at our campus Academy     a woman lay in the darkness beside me
tempting me with the hormones inside her body
into a private mark on the calendar     January 23rd     the earth kept on spinning
my naked body under its clothes seemed to want more honesty     firming slightly 
to commemorate this day     we cook porridge in the daytime     and treat nipples like incense cones
the hormones inside them carrying hundreds of millions of eggs
trying to expand their territory on my girlfriend’s flesh
each pretty egg having a secret affair with another  deep behind the night curtain 
each pretty egg deserting the brain
against its images of reproductive fervor
while eggs more beautiful surge  overflowing from the woman’s throat

Red Imp

a red imp sat down on the floor at my birthday party 
wailing     whenever I made a wish it paused for a while     from the center of the cake
emerged a devil’s tail
to keep from biting it to tears  I shared with this devil my year-old
fresh-cream-flavored body
a spider  falling from the Buddha niche   approached the melted candle wax     the innocent look on my face
was painted on the paper lantern  
now     the polar concepts of “good” and “evil” in my mind had peeled off
the skin that covered their shame
it hung blood red and striking     drooping sharply
signifying something
but I could not expose my wish     the devil helped me lay bare 
the peculiar proclivity of this age to stay away from white sails 
letting the devil devour me was worth celebrating