Nantahala Forest
pillowing on a log in the forest
above the swaying sky between gingkos
swirls down float
by float
last time I looked
at the sky this way, I was with an old friend
under a bodhi tree near a lake in Fuzhou city he told me
the last time he looked this way, he was six, on a haystack
surrounded by dirt splattered oxen.
somehow between these two strikes of clocks
marked an eon
so much happened
before our hearts once more become settled and hear
the wind outside of itself.
the sun grazes my nose every other second
I see branches entangle
the leaves entangle
the cicada wings entangle
bird feathers everything
is an intersection, and memories—
only when you re-member them, starts to stir
and whirl, and 沙(sha) 沙(sha), 沙(sha) 沙(sha)
like wind-branches, making knots
after knots
that cannot
unlock. in the quiet
of the eye, in the limits of your
inner void, you see between sounds,
holding still,
light.
Xiaoqiu is a poet, novelist and translator from Shanghai. His work has been published in Los Angeles Review, Meridian, Lunch Ticket, Reed Magazine, and more. His poetry has won the 2023 Editor’s Choice Award at Meridian, a finalist at Goldilocks Award at Sunspot lit, and semifinalist for the Cutbank chapbook prize. He is an editor at Interim magazine. Currently, he is a Black Mountain Institute Fellow and a PhD student of Creative Writing at UNLV.