{"id":14764,"date":"2018-08-01T00:41:18","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T05:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=14764"},"modified":"2018-08-01T09:15:56","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T14:15:56","slug":"two-poems-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14764","title":{"rendered":"Two Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Two Poems by Zhu Zhu translated from the Chinese by Dong Li.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">The Bayou of Time<\/p>\n<p>A little girl\u2019s bashfulness shimmers through her crow\u2019s feet,<br \/>\nblack eyeglass frame lends weight to her questioning tone:<br \/>\nDo you still remember me?<br \/>\nSuch a street encounter<br \/>\ndrags you back to a teenage summer afternoon\u2014<br \/>\nan attic in a relative\u2019s house, on the wall hung<br \/>\nthe headshot of Garbo, clothes and books in an equal mess,<br \/>\na creaking steel cot, a few springs rusted and snapped;<br \/>\nshe came every weekend then, her naked knees<br \/>\ndangling by the cot\u2019s edge as if on a swing, whispers, caresses,<br \/>\nwalks under moonlight, until the last bus took her away\u2014<br \/>\nher body was a key to open your manhood,<br \/>\nher back the most smooth silk that you had ever touched,<br \/>\nwithout her kiss perhaps you would have died of thirst&#8230;<br \/>\nnow your life seems like a river past the headlands,<br \/>\ncanals widened, bearing along silt and boats,<br \/>\nand the attic has been taken down, even the whole block<br \/>\nlike the negative of an ant nest has been destroyed by exposure\u2014<br \/>\nin this encounter you run into your downy self and the overwhelming<br \/>\npower of a visa officer: smile, listening, no approval issued&#8230;<br \/>\nwatching the blush diffuse on her face, you even think,<br \/>\nnot without mischief, of pneumonia tarrying in a romantic novel.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">Geography Teacher<\/p>\n<p>A taped old globe<br \/>\nspins slowly by her fingertips,<br \/>\nshe teaches Vesuvius and Mariana Trench,<br \/>\ndepression and tropical climate, how cold and warm fronts<br \/>\nmerge above the Pacific, how rain and clouds form.<br \/>\nYet her body teaches us another kind of geography,<br \/>\nthat is what we really want to know\u2014<br \/>\nalong the opening of her V-neck sweater, we<br \/>\nimagine ourselves as crawling commandoes in a film,<br \/>\ncutting electric fences with a pair of pliers, and<br \/>\nnervous that the searchlight will light up any time,<br \/>\nuntil the recess bell rings like an alarm set off&#8230;<br \/>\nwe watch her leave as if peeking through the window<br \/>\nat the open book of notes on her desk.<br \/>\nEven under her thick coat and the firm barrier of a scarf,<br \/>\nwe still make out the swaying flesh through folds of clothing.<br \/>\nFairytales can weave no more night dreams, we have grown up,<br \/>\nlike tadpoles in a glass jar ready to swim into rivers\u2014<br \/>\nunder the small-town sky that resembles a broken upended boat,<br \/>\nshe is Cape of Good Hope, telling of sunsets, U.F.O.s and jetlag.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14720\">Zhu zhu &amp; Dong Li<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two Poems by Zhu Zhu translated from the Chinese by Dong Li. &nbsp; The Bayou of Time A little girl\u2019s bashfulness shimmers through her crow\u2019s feet, black eyeglass frame lends weight to her questioning tone: Do you still remember me? Such a street encounter drags you back to a teenage summer afternoon\u2014 an attic in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[57],"tags":[36],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3Q8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14764"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14883,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14764\/revisions\/14883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}