Dream of the divided field Poems

"It is five months since we separated," Yanyi (The Year of Blue Water) writes in this tender second collection. In the aftermath of an abusive relationship ("I am not so different from the long hare/ stretched by her shadow/ her spirit hanging"), the speaker rebuilds himself, reconciling memories, stories, and dreams, each imparting a different kind of truth. "In the hundred rooms,/ I cannot pick one," he writes, "for each combines into the other/ where I piece-by-piece the shadows." A doubleness runs through the book as Yanyi shows how an abusive relationship can be destabilizing: "the dream becomes divided./ Your sense of reality. Their sense of reality." The speaker describes recovering from top surgery with lyric precision: "my pale nipples, the closed eyes of my chest, two sets of eyes now, four eyes, my scars enabling me to be doubly alive." As he piercingly writes, the self changes and fluctuates, "not backwards or forwards,/ but the past and the present/ overcoming one another." These subtle, evocative poems offer a reminder that healing comes by embracing multiplicities. (Mar.)

Aubade (The Lake) Buried dawn broke onto slight leaves. And geese between a cold and hot sky: a mountain and a sunrise. It is five months since we separated. I am not so different from the long hare stretched by her shadow, her spirit hanging. What I would give for the dead beat of mud shaped and now eaten in. Coyotes rousing in fast laps of the moon. Take me to the lake and do no evil. Lead me by the hair to who I love. Taking Care I take off my binder before a massage and dream of top surgery: not having to wait for the masseur to ask about--------, my abnormal desire to be inside this body, once, easily identified and therefore easy to take care of. I am not easy to take care of. I should just take care of myself: ask a doctor to remove the parts that are reprehensible. Like when they break the nose in order to construct a better one, I bring a picture to the hairdresser. I bring a picture to the mirror where I cut my skin with my eyes. As a man, I've learned something of nationhood: the shape of a brook now straddled by a dam, or choked by it. Leaving the House When I say I'm in love with you, that means I'm not alone inside of it. Together we talk to people we love, separately, in one voice. When my voice fills in love with you. When I sing on the outside. Excerpted from Dream of the Divided Field: Poems by Yanyi All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.