by Zhu Xiao Di
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| Cartoon by Clay Jones |
He fell
I hurt
I don’t know him
He’s rich
I’m poor
He knows me not
Parallel roads
Never across
He’s above
I’m below
Never met
Won’t talk
Snow’s falling
Snowball’s rolling
I’m only expecting
Thunder and lightning
For health reasons
I’ve long stopped eating chips
O chips
How vast a world
Will dip in mud
Zhu Xiao Di is the author of Thirty Years in a Red House: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth in Communist China (University of Massachusetts Press; Penguin Books), six collections of essays in Chinese, and more than 180 poems published in journals in the U.S., Singapore, the U.K., Sweden, and Canada. Written in English, his historical mystery novel, Tales of Judge Dee, was later translated and published in France and China. His chapbook, Pictures Never Taken, is shortlisted for the 2026 Silent River Poetry Prize. His prose appears in Father: Famous Writers Celebrate the Bond Between Father and Child.
