Changming Yuan, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of Chansons of a Chinaman (2009) and Landscaping (2013), grew up in rural China and currently tutors in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and operates PP Press. With a PhD in English,Yuan has poetry appearing in Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 819 other literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries.

Calling

Like the little guy screaming to his own death
On the collapsing bridge in Edmund’s painting
My other self is constantly calling
At the very top of its voice from the deepest

Valley of my sub-consciousness, from
The most remote corner of my inner world
From the darkest spot of my dream
Although its calls are muted, they travel afar

Echoing even beyond a whole continent
Like the calls of a blue whale, whose salty voice
Has such a high pitch that no human ears
Can hear them here and now

Y

Yellow-skinned, and yellow-hearted, you seem obsessed with the first letter of the word…

Using my yellow tail
I yellow-swam
From the Yellow River
As a yeast of the yellow peril
Against the yellow alert
In yellow journalism

With a yellow hammer
And a yellow sheet
I yielded to the yellow metal
At a yellow spot
¼ million yards away from Yellowknife

People call me yellow jack
Some hailed me as a yellow dog
When I yelped on my yellow legs
To flee from the yellow flu

Speaking Yerkish* like a yellow warbler
I have composed many yellow pages
For a yeasty yellow book
To be published by the yellow press
Don’t panic, I yell low.

* An artificial language developed for experimental communication between humans and chimpanzees.