Who keeps looping simplicity like a song?The last slanting light has declared solitudeA rope is still missing to perfect the bindingBlurt out your sodium-high prayersThey almost get pan-fried on the tongue’s plateauA symbolic acclivity is deliveredTo time’s address, but no one lives thereA goalkeeper, quietly blindfoldedScenes with bittersweet subtitlesYou finally feel nothing about themWho put the left heart atrium on the lease?In succession, decrepit furniture grows skullsThe light responsible for haulage is unacknowledgedPlanets become self-employersWe lost the magic of being kind
Lapses
Sun Tzu-ping
Translated from the Taiwanese Mandarin
Feature Date
- November 27, 2022
Series
- Translation
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English Copyright © 2022 by Nicholas Wong.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Born in 1976 in Taiwan, Sun Tzu-ping graduated from the Graduate Institute of Creative Writing and English Literature at National Dong Hwa University. He is currently an editor at the Liberty Times. Chinese titles by Sun include Knowing Shadows (essays), Sentimentalist (poetry) and Male Bodies (novel), among others.
Nicholas Wong is a visual artist and the author of Crevasse (Kaya Press, 2015), the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Besiege Me (Noemi Press, 2021), also a Lammy finalist in 2022. His translation has recently appeared in Ninth Letter, The Georgia Review, Cincinnati Review, Poetry London, and Foglifter.
Summer 2022
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
UNC Chapel Hill
Editor-in-Chief
Ellie Rambo
Poetry Editor
Colin Dekeersgieter
Managing Editor
Amy Chan
The Carolina Quarterly publishes a variety of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and artwork twice a year and is distributed to readers locally and to individual subscribers, public and university libraries, and bookstores in the United States and worldwide. Back issues are sold throughout the year. Free online access to the full-text of our current and back issues is available through the academic databases, EBSCO and ProQuest.
The Carolina Quarterly has been publishing established and emergent writers for 65 years. Recent issues have featured the works of Lauri Anderson, James Gordon Bennett, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Sean Bishop, Nicole Terez Dutton, Aaron Gwyn, K.A. Hays, Caitlin Horrocks, Stuart Nadler, Ben Purkert, Valerie Sayers, Ken Taylor, Matthew Volmer, G.C. Waldrep, Jerald Walker, and more. Pieces published in The Carolina Quarterly have appeared in New Stories from the South, Best of the South, Poetry Daily, O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prizes, and Best American Short Stories.
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