Poetry--By Yuan Changming--Canada

The Fish in the Glass Jug

You keep jumping high
Above the mouth to escape
Far from this prison
Not knowing there’s everything
But water outside the wall

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Seeing a Shadow

In the dark no one
Is moving, a fairy form
Surely, an alien
Is standing still, and surely
Never will we remain so

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Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks (including Kinship [2015] and The Origin of Letters [2015]), grew up in rural China, became an ESL student at 19, and published several monographs on translation before moving to Canada. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver and, since mid-2005, has had poetry appearing in 1039 literary publications across 34 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review.