Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You

To sleep with you or to be slept, what’s the difference if there’s any?

Two bodies collide – the force, the flower pushed open by the force,

the virtual spring in the flowering – nothing more than this

and this we mistake as life restarting. In half of China

things are happening: volcanoes

erupting, rivers running dry,

political prisoners and displaced workers abandoned,

elk deer and red-crowned cranes shot.

I cross the hail of bullets to sleep with you.

I press many nights into one morning to sleep with you.

I run across many of me and many of me run into one to sleep with you.

Yet I can be misled by butterflies of course

and mistake praise as spring,

a village like Hengdian as home. But all these,

all of these are absolutely indispensable

reasons that I sleep with you.