Immigrating
By Changming Yuan
To escape from the tyrannical logic
Of your mother tongue
You wandered, wandering
Through earth’s length and breadth
Subjecting your old self to another syntax
A whole set of grammatical rules
Strangely new to your lips and tips
To expand the map of your mind
Far beyond your home and haven
Yet in the meantime it becomes colonized
By all the puzzling paradoxes
Of this chosen language, for example:
Quicksand can be very slow
Boxing rings are in fact square
And a guinea pig is neither a pig
Nor is it from Guinea
Asguardia: Second Choice
By Changming Yuan
Last time I was not chosen
This time I have selected myself
To join the mass long march
Towards Asgardia, though
Without Moses as our leader
I know I cannot go to heaven
But I can flee from hell
Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver. Credits include nine Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1,419 other publications across 41 countries.