The Exiled Poet Reads to a Mostly
Middle Class White Audience

The white page is pure amnesia.
—Bei Dao

When the Chinese poet
read his poems in his original tongue

symbols turned in his mouth
dissolved into words, little

singing sounds
flew around his face

like papery moths saved
from a burning decade

and into the audience
small black brooms swept

between two centuries
a child’s hands

letting go a few, a hundred,
numberless silk stars.

[From How the Garden Looks from Here]

~

From the publisher’s Web site:

Lisa Zimmerman received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in the Colorado Review, Redbook, The Sun, River Styx, Poet Lore, and Indiana Review, among other journals. Her poetry has been nominated three times, most recently in 2009, for the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks as well as the book How the Garden Looks From Here, winner of the 2004 Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award. Her most recent collection The Light at the Edge of Everything was published in 2008 by Anhinga Press. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado.