A Fan-Shaped Ginkgo Leaf—
Siyun Fang
I place it in a book of poems.
Each line
tastes of soil from Nanjing.
It has the chirping of crickets, the green of grasslands,
the white of cooking smoke, the clarity of a river,
the bountiful basket of apples.
I trace my way home
on the skeleton of the leaf.
A beam of sunshine
shakes back and forth from the mountain ranges in the east
to the paddy field in the west—
While my home in the south
watches at me quietly in the depths of the map.
Siyun Fang is a poet and translator. A graduate of Centre College and New York University, she is currently attending The University of Mississippi MFA Program. Her poems have appeared in Rigorous, Tule Review, and among other journals and magazines. Her research interests include gender theory and medieval studies.