A Spark is the Precise Measure of the Universe

Define pain: a lonely ghost
A thousand cuts into the heart
A beast chews off the limb to get off the trap

You shouldn’t feel hurt, he said
It’s just a handshake, a business transaction
Nothing personal when I buy girls in Amsterdam

I have forfeited my power
I’ve let myself down

Teng — ?: sick over winter

Who can describe pain—the most private from grief, trauma, anguish?
Who can cross the bridge to reach another’s sorrow?

The fire is chasing the forest
Biting the night with a screeching joy

I’m your forest
When the last tree is down
You’ll have nothing to hang

Tong ?: sorrow to the heart’s content
Energy to move us into another ether

I’ve been there
Between the teeth of agony
Wondering how long I could go on
How many limbs I must lose to live

In the storm the copper heart churns and churns

Trust the sword, said Sensei
To cut, you must have faith
In the blade

I’ve been to hell and back

From the braided river
I hear the cranes
— a wing span of three thousand miles —
Mexico and Siberia on each side

A gift–on the tip of my tongue

by Wang Ping

A Third Eye

It’s mid-April. A blizzard arrives with hail and sounds of chimes.

On her 80th birthday, my mother asked when I’d go home one more time.

Yesterday I rowed 10k in my single scull. Now the Mississippi groans under the ice.

A friend sent me “The Third Snow” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a poem from Siberia, a century old.

A blizzard is indifferent to space or time.

Via WeChat, my brother marvels at my house in St. Paul, how affordable compared to his 6 million Yuan hole on an island. He’s willing to forgo the breeze from East China Sea for a place in Minnesota freeze.

“Please don’t go back to China,” pleaded Gary Snyder, tears in his eyes. “You know you’re on their list, right?”

A brainstorm in soft simplicity. A debate if I should become a citizen after two and a half decades of wandering.

And robins know how to wait. They know how spring rides the cold front, how worms awaken the earth. They follow the 37° isotherm for their flight between Guatemala and Minnesota.

My mother tried many years to unlock the secret of Dao De Jing. She was allowed to step into the Way after she lost her sight at 73.

They follow the smell of snow and rain, the thawing earth, and worms’ vertical migration. When the blizzard blows them off course, they fly towards the sun, and follow its angled light to get back on track.

I reached the last stage for citizenship, twice, but chickened out after I did my fingerprints. I never showed up for the swearing.

Robins have an inner compass. It sits in their eyes, two free radicals spinning in blue light, two lovers, radiant with joy… this is their quantum coherence.

Their third eye through a blizzard, towards home.

by Wang Ping