by Xue Di

Tonight
Translated by Wang Ping & Keith Waldrop

Rock, September! A dark-skinned child
lights the lamp in the tower
Its golden orange shines at the moon
Rock, September! Tap on your water jar
in the evening breeze

My days are filled with secrets
But when? Can I make those I
love understand my wishes
by describing the chrysanthemum’s pistil
My brow is covered with candles
Trumpets bend towards happiness
trumpeting my joy
to the peaceable RhÈne

Love me! the RhÈne where antlers
disappear. Stars shine out above me
Songs from happy lips
as this wine jar of tonight’s sky
tilts towards my delight
Love me, September! Rock
Rock me with tripod feet
Shake me with the warm charm of your glaze
The dark-skinned boy is going home to the river
Tonight, my heart, here
you will feel no pain, no loneliness

by Xue Di

Sitting In The Sun
Translated by Wang Ping & Keith Waldrop

Sitting in the sun, he writes
and turns the darkness in his heart
to the light
In the sun he is
surprised to see himself
That enemy, who stuffs your gut and holds your
soul by force, ages you
Unspeakable fear
takes hold. Sometimes for no good reason you
hate yourself. That enemy
inside you
gets off a good exit line
while you doze in the sun

Sitting in the sun, he dreams
and turns
life inside out. This way we can
live again, distinguish the
too soiled facets. We were young then and
careless. Thread hung
from torn parts. We didn’t know how
to use our bodies properly
Only sitting in the sun we
begin to know love
Just as we begin to feel warm and enlightened
death–like time malfunctioning
–stumbles out from a living short cut
with a good poem

Sitting in the sun:
the light is leading him
off from where he’s been
sleeping away his life

by Therí Alyce Pickens

The following poem is excerpted from What Had Happened Was by Therí Alyce Pickens, copyright, Duke University Press, 2025.

the blind girl lands a shot put where it’s supposed to land & the crowd is amazed at the amazingly talented girl who throws shot puts while blind. the amazing blind shot putter & i roll my eyes & i roll them so hard my fingers spit out words & lolo jones says she’s not getting pity claps lolo says this isn’t because she’s blind i say to myself u were supposed to be a hero & u were supposed to be a competitor who understood what it is to be different but i’ve got too much home training to say she’s just a bootleg flo jo so i write all intelligently & put that phd stank on the tweet the claps are by definition pity. people would not be clapping if they could have seen what she saw which is that she didn’t need eyes to land the shot put & i’m so mad i log off & i unfollow & i block her ass too & years later when i see allyson felix’s scar i think allyson might have understood what had happened she woulda got it. the difference between changing your mind & confirming it ’cause she’s black like lolo black like me but i’m more like that white girl with my body that people think is a whole lot of can’t & i wish i would see lolo on the street one day & i just know she gonna recognize me & be like we got beef & i swear imma be like lolo imma vegetarian

by Therí Alyce Pickens

The following poem is excerpted from What Had Happened Was by Therí Alyce Pickens, copyright, Duke University Press, 2025.

As I watch nurses
turn their noses up
and CNAs avoid
the conversation with words
never uttered out loud
and ideas only
vaguely gestured at
like they don’t know
what I mean
or I don’t know
what they mean
and, as doctors never ask,
but I tell them anyway,
I never think to withhold,
to play my vagues,
but rather watch
how color, texture, size
create this moment of recoil.
Sometimes one will admit
they’ve never heard such detail,
such self-knowledge,
with a straight face
like the years of therapy
paid off,
like the person harangued
for years to pay attention
in her body
finally got it right.
When I peer over the bowl
as though a microscope lay between us—
a set of lenses which

as at the ophthalmologist’s
tell me better or worse
or about the same—
I straighten my back
and curve my smile
several times a day

and watch the small islands
settle like Atlantis must have
housing whole worlds
of tiny organisms and the detritus
that used to be food
and sometimes still is.
I make sure to note
how I unload
these burdens
whether it takes the shape
where it now lives
in the S-bend
or if it is like it used to be
a scattered shot in the dark,
rushed to
and screaming with electricity
or if it feels empty
like when it used to come unbidden
into a bag. I relish
the candle doing its work
cleansing the air
setting fire to some evidence
that I lived
but not the moment of relief
to look back
at what I consumed
and let go
thinking maybe there’s something
worth savoring.