by Xue Di

New Year
     translated by Hil Anderson and Keith Waldrop

Snow covers former days

Children hide in the snow while three squirrels
scurry to cross the road running between tree trunks

The trumpet blows the lips, extravagantly
wild with joy.  Lover’s anxiety
blessing like an abandoned factory

in this year’s coldest rain.  Cello
slithering, like a big bird on vacation
A feather, mother’s best loved child

in a foreign land, days grown old, even
lighter than a feather.  Father, a pen

nearly fountained out, held
in the hand of his oldest farthest child
in exile, a soul alone

Spirit -filled child.  Who feels most
the pain.  Whose thought is deepest
And the flesh hardening

around his deep and anguished love.  As in
a small harbor, fishing boats arrive on time
tourists gawk at seawater unloaded by the gallon

After which, mast and sails
point at a tilt.  Birds, vacationing
done, fly north along the ocean axis

Snow presses down on shrunken
used-up days.  Through the window
I see a new year, sunlight darkening

in a quiet little New England town
New Year — is my distant home

feeling the chill, a period of new blizzards

by Anne Elezabeth Pluto

From across the window
the wind rises
dust, birds, debris
cyclone forward
away as shadow
from me to you
this separation
mutes my heart
noting nothing
I can say any longer
moves body or soul
to the sun bright
brilliant winter
the way I love
the earth — hopeful
and sleeping ice
under my boots
ice in my eyes
ice a cross
my mouth
a cross
the room
in blue
your dark eyes
dart like arrows
my desire akin to
grief now
familiar — a pattern
in a scarf or table
cloth a decoration
for the home.

by Michael Boughn

Among Dupont’s tattered
wounds,
commerce’s ragged
edge, sudden curve
of attention shaped
to cocked hip
draped in thought.  Small
blessing opens drama
of exceptional light
without benefit
of a single belief, no
strings attached
She
doesn’t even know
just that sweep
of thigh is full
of dream, in
habitation, strange ground
no fixed
address, nothing
tied to scheduled arrivals.  City’s concrete examples built
of codes that hold
sweeping limits
in further dramas
of skies offering
exceptional currency, as charge
flows through Bloor’s
afternoon roar, sudden blue
through sun flashed towers

Then it’s just
you, me and the next
corner where sympathy
of earth and sun plays
out
in transitive intimations
of further elations
among stellar events
and distribution of cruelty
remains a matter
of querulous attention to news
of another
dead child
starved, beaten
just down the road

So much a part
of us
a plural pronoun
containing
second town’s becoming
animal crossing into asphalt
extensions along edge
coyote trails sweep through
along curve of riparian
memories urban rent
green slash through towers’
feeble hold

Hard to figure
such implicate energies in odd\
corners of soul
studded with fall’s ragged
corridors,
leaf litter

Clouds that suggested
titular elaborations
of ocular command
and a certain return to loins
of the visible are buoyed
by hot luminescence
in storied distances
between roofs
still fill eyes
with folds and shadows
announce billows
of time
amid thought
of city’s face
promise sweeping
from the end
to beyond

by Vanessa Vie

Whilst autumnal night
Interlocks our drowsing flesh
Know we want more night.