Two Poems
Rent from DeepDyve- Two Poems
The White Terror
Taiwan, 1947-1987
The ink on the paper kept disappearing.Even the permanent. Even the sickle-celled.
The afterlife of tonguessliced from the mouths of the mouse-trappedserved up for their descendants,plated—
Then a waiter whisked away the plates.
Then the characters on the menu(the one hidden from Westerners)re-assembled, were renderedun-translatable.
Fastidiously scrubbed.
Efficient as the cleaner in a gangsterfilm who wipes cerebrumfrom linoleum, then vanishes.
Small Potato in the Moonlight
Gu Cheng's* drawings turned macabre.His windows slammed shut.His small potato in the moonlightcame to resemble the sad-sackshape of a fallen man.A dog paused to sniff him, then was gone. [End Page 145]
Barbara Yien (1975-) has been published widely in American journals. She now lives in Berkeley, California, working as a textbook editor.
Footnotes
* A Misty poet of the early 1980s, Gu Cheng went into exile; in 1993, suffering from depression, he committed suicide.
