Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
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The First Day
by
Changming Yuan

While in the East
Pangu was busy
Waving his hands wildly
To cleave the chaos
Into yin and yang
All God did in the West was
Give his first order to nobody:
Let there be light
And then light came in

While presenting myself
With a loud yellowish yell
to a small muddy village
In central southern China
I reached up my little hands high
To the apathetic sky
And felt it bending low
To fill them with soila??s smell

The moment my Allen managed to crawl
Out of his moma??s womb in St Paula??s
What he saw was the absence of thickening
Darkness that became an island
Beyond which I had travelled afar
To where the borderline was erased
Between day and night
As I watched him grow
In ever freshening light

Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)
Changming Yuan
Changming Yuan
USA
Changming Yuan, twice Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Politics and Poetics (2009), grew up in rural China, published several books before moving to canada, and currently works as an independent tutor in Vancouver. Yuan's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Istanbul Literary Review, London Magazine, Poetry Salzburg Review, Public Republic, Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, Taj Mahal Review and more than 250 other literary publications worldwide.
Istanbul Literary Review - September 2011 Edition (#21)