The Hibiscus is Blooming
The hibiscus is blooming. I suddenly remember
my wife and her girlfriends
picking peppercorns on Weibei Hancheng plateau.
They wore handkerchiefs or straw hats on their heads.
Like a slope of flowers, they, too, bloomed until cool October.
Peppercorn branches are sharp,
their thorns easily punctured tape-wrapped fingers.
Life has always been like this: oozing with blood.
Time on the plateau is lonely and distant.
Year after year, smoking tractors have delivered the world’s best zest
from rough hands.
How widespread we labored under a blue sky!
Some people hurried to Shanxi by ferry.
Someone came back from Wenxi with dessert and a cart of pineapples.
The inter-provincial shuttle whizzed down the road. Wild geese flew in the sky,
leading one migration high above our other down low.
The Yellow River under the plateau flowed continuously, bringing
heavy snows from Tanggula Mountains and news along the way.
And all this is more like a hibiscus blooming,
decorating August’s bitterness in pink and white.
木槿开了
木槿开了 突然想起
爱人和她的伙伴们
在渭北韩城塬上摘花椒
她们头顶一方手帕或草帽
像一坡花儿 一直要开到十月秋凉
椒刺是锐利的
可以轻易穿透指尖上缠绕的胶布
生活 一直是这样 渗着血迹
塬上的时光寂寞又廖远
一年一年 冒烟的拖拉机从粗糙的手中
把人间的至味传输
青天下的劳动多么辽阔
一些人乘轮渡匆匆去往山西
有人从闻喜回来 带回煮饼和一车黄梨
跨省的大巴扬尘远去 大雁飞在天上
用高处的迁徙带领着低处的迁徙
塬下的黄河不舍昼夜 带来
唐古拉山的大雪和沿途消息
而这一切 多像木槿花开
散发出八月粉白的苦意
The Village on the Xia River
Xia River is not a river. At most it’s a brook.
There’s no village on its shore, only a few houses.
Those who exaggerate “village” and “river” do so out of habit.
The world and its objects have no answers.
Human questions are as vast as those about the heavens.
A father wandered the village.
A father’s father wandered the village.
Beyond them: empty space and time.
What comes after me? What follows the children?
None of us can see.
It’s all beyond a crumbling mud wall
after the well runs dry.
From one dwelling to another,
from one tree to another,
nothing is familiar to me anymore.
Thirty years ago we took turns playing hide and seek.
I hid in the house’s abandoned wing.
Morning to night, no one found me.
Everyone gave up searching.
Just like today when, from faraway distances,
we return, deserted by our homeland.
峡河岸上的村庄
峡河不是江河 最多只算溪水
岸上没有村庄 最多只算屋舍
将二者夸大命名的人 只是出于习惯
世道与事物都无答案
人间之问与天空之问一样辽阔
父亲在村庄游荡
父亲的父亲在村庄游荡
再往上 是空荡荡的空间和时间
我之后将是什么 少年之后将是什么
所有人都无力看见
那是一堵坍圮的泥墙之后
一口干涸的水井之后
从一座房子到另一座房子
从一棵树到另一棵树
再无我熟悉的事物
我想起三十年前 我们轮番躲猫藏
我躲在一间废弃的厢房内
从早到晚没有人找到我
所有的人选择了放弃寻找
一如今日 长路归乡者
成了故土放弃的人
Slowing Rush Hour Down
Rising in early morning through the window
I see Father walking in the yard.
He leans on a crutch steps up and down
like a twisted willow in the wind.
He washes his face under the tap.
The yellow dog, Abao, follows behind.
Father rinses over and over.
Finally, he washes Abao, too.
The cockscomb blossoms into a torch.
Father plucks a petal, tears it,
sticks a piece to Abao, puts the other half
on his own forehead.
They look at each other; both sneer
with bared teeth.
Two duskmen, two grains of sand,
slowing morning’s rush to a halt
他们让匆匆的早晨卡了一下
清早起来 隔着窗子
我看见父亲在院里散步
他拄着拐杖 一步三颠
像风中的拐柳
他去水龙头上洗脸
黄狗阿宝跟在身后
他洗了一遍又一遍
最后 又给阿宝洗了一次
鸡冠花开成了火把
父亲摘下一瓣 撕开
给阿宝贴上 又将另一半
粘在自己的额头
他们相视 都笑了
露出了豁牙
两个垂暮者 两粒沙子
使匆匆的早晨卡了一下
Nianxi Chen, born 1970 in Northern China, began writing poems in 1990. In 1999, he left his hometown and labored as a miner for 16 years. In 2015, he couldn’t continue work due to occupational disease. In 2016, he was awarded the Laureate Worker Poet Prize. His rise to fame as a “migrant worker poet” was featured in a 2021 New York Times article. Chen’s poetry book, Records of Explosion, provides lyrical documentation of the hidden costs behind China’s financial boom. Chen’s poems in translation have appeared or are forthcoming in Tupelo, Rattle, Plume, Versopolis, Poetry Northwest, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Southern Humanities Review.
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, Meigs Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia, is the coauthor of The Creative Ethnographer’s Notebook (2024), the poetry book Imperfect Tense (2016), and five other books on the arts of language and education. Recipient of six NEA Big Read Grants, a 2023 NEA Distinguished Fellowship, Hambidge Residency Award, and the Beckman award for Professors Who Inspire, she was appointed in 2020 as Fulbright Scholar Ambassador. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Georgia Review, Lilith, American Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Mom Egg, Plume, Tupelo, Rattle, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere.
Kuo Zhang is an assistant professor of education at Siena College and received her Ph.D. in TESOL & World Language Education at the University of Georgia. Her poem, “One Child Policy,” was awarded second place in the 2012 Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Poetry Competition held by the American Anthropological Association. Her poems have appeared in The Roadrunner Review, Lily Poetry Review, Bone Bouquet, K’in, DoveTales, North Dakota Quarterly, Literary Mama, Mom Egg Review, Adanna Literary Journal, Raising Mothers, MUTHA Magazine, Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Anthropology and Humanism.
Header photo by Shiva Reddy, courtesy Pixabay.
