by Xue Di

First Love
     translated by Wang Ping and Keith Waldrop

Calling ceaselessly your name
in order to feel how I was caught and
plunged into birth
I cried, meaning to refuse the un-
welcoming world
Pain contains me
frightened and confused
calling your name
Nightmare clutches me
My heart is torn by hungry
wolves within my flesh

First love, like a mirror
broken.  Pain
of my birth, life’s
pain.  Love leads me by the nose
I’m in a hard grip
pulled along.  Wolves
prowl in all directions

by Xue Di

Seven Years
     translated by Waverly and Keith Waldrop

Walking on broken glass, living
in a city whose dialect I don’t speak

Feet infected, walking my own way
things persisting back of the flesh, bringing

thoughts to fruition.  Making hands
hold back, there where the dark stands out.  Speech

reaching to where we have not reached
Labor without end.  Loneliness, then a precise

word.  In a local crowd:  stronger
than some new kind of language

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.