then telling be the antidote

Xiao Yue Shan is a poet and editor born in China and living on Vancouver Island. Her chapbook, How Often I Have Chosen Love, was published in 2019.

• acknowledgments viiia photograph of tomorrow 1striations 2maps 7rises in the urban population determining that each resident beallotted 1.6 square metres of personal space 8wealth distribution will not be consideredin the economic reform 9the coming of spring in the time of martial law 10witness 11mong kok, october 2019 12exile hong kong 13exodus hong kong 14the swift light against your face beautiful 17on the last day of the heisei era 20modals of lost opportunity 21ideogram of morning 23conjuring 25the nation of aphasia 26and hong kong in 2001 was always this shade of light blue 28the right to work 30inheritance 31kitchen 33she says to start with cold water 34ornithomancy 35taking note 37some days come in like a bird through an open window 38in love as in tourism 39explain to me fate as if I were a child 40decade 41may 35th 43only in silent shadows and in dreams 44speak 45speak again 47in beijing the young writers ask me why peoplealways want to talk about censorship 48the emperor and I dream of immortality 49looking twice 53search by no light 54the dictionary of desire 55the man I love ran off with everything except my poems 57eve on a one night stand 58

"To be modern is to thrive among sudden juxtapositions and to witness deep within the unsettling interstices. In then telling be the antidote, juxtapositions—of past and present, of pastoral and urban, of the bitter lessons of the classics and the untaught lessons of the coming days—arrive and insist with awesome velocity. And yet Xiao Yue Shan tempers that velocity with apparently effortless, almost serene control. There is an uncommon mastery at work in these poems."