Yuan Changming
Refugeeing
walking around
around the corner of a back lane
I used to carry my dark identity
as carefully as if it were a big piece
of sunglass, through which I could see
others or myself, only if I chose
to do so, but on a hasty afternoon
I tripped down, &
smashed it into hundreds of
small & sharp pieces; since then
my shredded selfhood has become a big
public nuisance, a traffic hazard
as it glistens glaringly under the sun, cutting
tires or human feet, from time to time
Yuan Changming is the author of the poetry collection Chansons of a Chinaman (Leaf Garden Press, 2009), and the critical monograph Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010). His poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Literary Review of Canada, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Taj Mahal Review, The Threepenny Review, Two Thirds North, and many other journals, as well as in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009 (Tightrope Books, 2009), edited by A. F. Moritz and Molly Peacock, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2012 (Tightrope Books, 2012), edited by Carmine Starnino and Molly Peacock. Born and raised in Songzi, China, Yuan holds a PhD in English from the University of Saskatchewan, and lives in Vancouver, BC, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan.
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