Two Poems
To be a Poet & Ode to the Old Man From my Childhood Home with the Gigantic Pet Rabbits
by Xiao Xue
to be a poet
is to crawl back
into grandma’s womb
hoping for a taste of pig’s tail
in a new year.
ode to the old man from my childhood home with the gigantic pet rabbits
there’s a specific kind of sunlight / i never forget / the mid-july kind / the kind pushing the edges / of these oak branch shadows / falling / through the gap in his front teeth / and at ten years old / my eyes lingered there a bit longer / to get a glimpse of the uvula / hanging there / must be the same as mine / his hands too brown / to be cruel / but still i do not dare to stare / instead i turn to his rabbits like the other neighborhood kids / they were the size of small unstriped tigers / huddled together like it was winter / i too / mistook their fur for snow / and reached out / to touch.
Xiao Xue is a poet who recently graduated from the University of Kansas but can't seem to decide where she’s “from” at the moment. At the very beginning, it was Xinjiang, China. More recently, she lives in Kansas City, Missouri where a former shoe factory used to be, with a very sweet baker and a very old cat. There were many places in between—all of them were home at some point in time. Xiao Xue has been published in the Kiosk Magazine and hopes to be forthcoming somewhere someday soon.