How Love Talks

To night
I do not question
its warm reticence
against a flint
or its privation
a river
without unfoldings
dark and cool, without
scoopings of the moon
a copious body
coming down
like an empire
on which
I fold a paper boat
carry it over
the coppery lines
of the black earth
and believe in
a certain narrative
by a certain other
for whom
I keep the tributary
of language: digressive,
small-scale, defiant
as a fish
against the keel
splashing
with an armor
worn old

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Shiyang Su is a Chinese poet. These poems are excerpts from her in-progress collection concerning the struggle, agony, and loss in recent years, intensified by COVID and frequent social and political upheavals. Her other poems can be found or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Blue Marble Review, Unbroken, Rattle, Passages North, and others. She was nominated for Best New Poets.