Wu Min was born in 1964 in Shehong, Sichuan Province, now living in Ordos, Chengdu and Osaka. He started to write poems in the 1990s, and has published a few poems in Poetry Magazine, People’s Literature, Enclave, Poetry Monthly and Shanxi Literature, etc. He is the author of the collections This Side of the Basin, Pistol of Retreat, Clouds Shrugging Their Shoulders In the Sky, and Short Poems.
Yi Feng translator
Keep Your Eye on the Meter!
Keep your eye on the meter!
Hammer out a string of symbols with grief
Inside there is a cat
A bacterial strain slips
Is there enough loving warmth?
Digging a hundred graves, tentatively
Who can promise a passage through the air station but not just a cool rain
Guard the toy box and the application manual
Copy your pain, and collect it under the driver’s seat
Wake up one morning
to make a promise to the air
Haunt on the high seas. Fear those strange ships
The wind is strangled ——
Nevertheless, it is only a firefox
Possess a gray sheet
a perfect defeat.
You Will Die in the Awkward Winter
You will die in the awkward winter. Clad in a straitjacket though,
the mask-pasted visage. At night sleep eludes me
No soul can parachute from the chill
The lunatics and fools reign over the asylum. Crowded lies are the aesthetics
Waiting is a plant named raspberry
Not a bird, thus fly is impossible.
Watch a film. The sepia surface
Your wrench, calcium-deficient, fails to loosen the tightened screw
The bomb inside the womb nears the critical point.
Hum a tune, pretending that you are joyous at this very moment.
Boundary
Objects transgress their own boundaries
while concepts increasingly tighten
The edge，slides
and eventually is wrapped into their own field
There is not a center any more
or a dome
The presence of the event becomes an evidence
and is identified as the possessor
Each one of us may be
Abraham
Puzzles
What makes me say that this is the same river
Under what circumstances is time defined
Where does the pyramid’s pinnacle point
and what about the texture of the stone
Does the eternal subject really exist
Where does its breadth and location lie
What flows away continuously
is just water or not
What does it mean that things themselves flow
Where is God’s attic located
He really exists or does He not
When was the world turned on
and what state will it be turned off
Why can I perceive
Why do I perceive
Why do I probe
Why can I probe
What kind of existence is life, or is it just an illusion
and are these really the questions
Why do we have to live in questions
What does this orientation of living mean
And those martyrs
Aristotle, Newton, Kant, Einstein
those outstanding figures of prophetic human
In the vast cosmos
their spirit is less than pale dusts
and their flesh more perishable
Automatic Detachment
The inside of the automatic detaches from its outside
leaving a dented void
before going off to the pumping station to conceive concrete
Each frame
discreetly becomes an authentication
The cosmic divide of fire and stone
Prankster’s face
Bond is a Horse
A parallel projectile
Wet forehead
Rocking sensuous folds
The difficulty is too soft
Directly to the center of quagmire
The air shimmers white
in illumination released
How many kilometers until we reach the graves of the living
We’re crossing the train
You there，and then
light the pants on fire until Hannibal(1) takes off his hat
to salute a plane
Forced landing on the tailbone of a grouse is
to find yourself
is to find the existence of
a shriveled galaxy
Asteroids shimmer with a thieving light
Here must be a tiger, writing a guilty report
and retired gums
gnawing on red steel nails of language
Now it’s night, and the sun comes out to walk the dog
A huge event is
inscribed on the poliomyelitis
That I need money
means toad, and he hasn’t been to work yet
Your pain
can be cured with a band-aid
Bond is a horse, not a tough and brave guy
He chews and bite on cars
empty refrigerators
and invites you to a vacation
Please pay attention to the speed of the car, and not to mention fatigue driving
Imagine the climax
by Moon Lake in Alxa, Tengger Desert
1200 km
(1)Translator’s note: “Hannibal” refers to Hannibal Barca, who is a famous Carthaginian general and militarist during the Roman era.
All Is Futile
Accept each day. Cross many streets,
and wrap a drop of water from the floor.
Absorb a molecular formula, and let waves breathe into each other.
The remains on the sheets, a tiny wormhole of a tiny difference.
There’s always a pair of wings in nothingness,
between the sky and the floor. Deep in flesh,
the incomprehensible uncertainty—why was it the shampoo that explodes?
I only know color and thickness. The time that it takes for wounds to heal.
The unforeseen preservatives roar alone.
Who took the day’s living, above the high wall?
The fillable clarity, exposes the necessity of the unknown.
Sustained organs with decoration, and then taken.
All right, a way out. All is futile.
The thumbtack’s foot rusts in the coffee-brewing kitchen.
